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A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 




THE PLAZA, LOOKING SOUTH, SHOWING THE FOUNTAIN OF ABUNDANCE 
AGAINST THE CORNELIUS VANDERBILT HOUSE 
CARRERE AND HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS (PAGE 308) 




ABUNDANCE, DETAIL OF THE PLAZA FOUNTAIN 
DESIGNED BY KARL BITTER 
EXECUTED BY ISIDORE KONTI 



A LOITERER IN NEW 
YORK 

DISCOVERIES MADE BY A RAMBLER 

THROUGH OBVIOUS YET UNSOUGHT 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 



BY 

HELEN W. HENDERSON 

AUTHOR OF "THE ART TREASURES OF WASHINGTON. 
ETC.. ETC. 



WITH A PREFACE BY 
PAUL W. BARTLETT 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYEIGHT, 1917, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



NOV 19 1917 



PKLNTKD IN TaE UNITED STATES OF AUBRICA 



©GI.A477635 

1 1 » I 



TO 

BILLIE 

AND 

GILBERT WHITE 

Souvenir d'affection 



PREFACE 

To a traveller the thought of loitering in a great 
city is more suggestive of the celebrated haunts 
abroad than of New York. It conjures visions 
of Rome, of Venice, of Florence, where historical 
relics and works of art are found at every turn. 
It would recall, perhaps, rambles in the streets 
and boulevards of Paris and the innocent joys of 
the Bouquineur on the Quais; the misty mornings, 
the quiet afternoons, and evening strolls on the 
banks of the Seine. It would perhaps revive 
the souvenir of the delightful feeling of peaceful 
comfort and "nearness" to the Past, so readily 
enjoyed in the sombre byways and the gay and 
bustling highways of London. Things are life- 
size abroad and supremely human too. There 
one is encouraged to dream and to think, and 
loitering is an art! 

With these thoughts in mind it seems difficult, 
at first glance, to see how one could really loiter 
here. The consciousness of one's self is easily 
lost in the presence of our superhuman buildings. 
The sky-line, however grand, is far away, and a 
profound feeling of awe replaces that of intimacy 
and charm. The works of art are difficult to 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

find, and the " ambience " of ceaseless and 
strenuous activity precludes all hope of peaceful 
meditation to those who do not know the nooks 
and corners where the Past still lingers with the 
Present. 

This book, in reahty the History of the 
Romance and Art of Manhattan, fortunately 
comes to our rescue. The traveller will find it 
a friendly and willing guide; he will be lured 
on, over the old Boston Post Road, along 
Broadway and Fifth Avenue, his curiosity and 
interest always kept ahve; and half -forgotten 
mysteries will be disclosed to him while on the 
way. 

The lover of New York may rejoice in the 
folk-lore tales of " hamlet " and " bouwerie," 
retold in sympathetic and feeling words, and in 
the remembrance of revered landmarks, beauti- 
fully described. 

The artist and connoisseur, on the other hand, 
may find much to admire in the author's appre- 
ciation of art and in her joy to praise. They 
will be touched by her quiet persistence in calhng 
attention to things worth while, and amused by 
her skill in deahng with unfortunate works, so 
common with us, which, with a few casual words, 
are deftly set aside, so deftly indeed that, at times, 
one scarcely reahzes the strength and justice of 
her criticism. 



PREFACE ix 

Miss Helen Henderson, a true art critic with- 
out the pretensions of a critic, is particularly well 
equipped for a work of this kind. She had the 
good fortune, after completing her studies at the 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to spend 
some years abroad, to come in contact with most 
of the modern masters, and to live in the midst 
of the artistic and hterary activities of Paris and 
London. 

To-day her opinions are based on real under- 
standing, her emotions and intuitions have been 
tempered by years of literary experience, and 
her sense of the psychology of human events is 
mellowed by a kind philosophy, which is not 
devoid, however, of a gentle touch of humour. 

In bringing the art treasures of the city nearer 
to us, in reminding us that there are still traces 
of Poetry and Romance left in Manhattan, Miss 
Henderson has done a good and worthy work. 

The gentle irony of her title leads me to 
believe that she has little hope of persuading 
many New Yorkers to loiter; but if any book 
could teach them to " idle," and to " idle " with 
pleasure and profit, it is certainly "A Loiterer 
in New York." 

Paul W. Bartlett. 

New Yomc, 23 September, 1917. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEE P-*^QK 

I. The Picture 15 

II. Manahachtanienk 27 

III. Dutch Dominion 38 

IV. Enghsh Rule 57 

V. The Old Town 71 

VI. Trinity Church 102 

VII. The City Hall 125 

VIII. Bouwerie Village 152 

IX. Greenwich Village — The Bossen Bouwerie . 179 

X. Washington Square 200 

XI. Gramercy Park 223 

XII. Union and Madison Squares . . . 238 

XIII. Murray Hill 266 

XIV. The Avenue 286 

XV. The Plaza 306 

XVI. Central Park East— Yorkville . . .318 

XVII. Central Park W^est— Bloemendaal . . 343 

XVIII. Columbia Heights 356 

XIX. Inwood — Manhattanville to Kingsbridgc . 387 

XX. Brooklyn— The Sculpture of Frederick 

MacMonnies 405 

XXI. Brooklyn's Battle Marks . . . .425 

XXII. Random Decorations 437 

xi 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Plaza, Looking South .... Frontispiece v 
" Abundance." By Karl Bitter. Detail of 
the Plaza Fountain 

PAGE , 

" Under the Brooklyn Bridge." By Ernest Lawson 18 

" Brooklyn Bridge." By Edward W. Redfield . 24.- 
" Night : New York from Brooklyn Heights." By 

Edward W. Redfield 30 , 

" Indians of Manhattan." By Barry Faulkner . 40 

" Landing of Henry Hudson." By Barry Faulkner 40 
Colonel Abraham de Peyster. By Georger Edwin 

Bissell 46 

"Fort Orange in the Seventeenth Century." By 

Elmer E. Garnsey 50 

" Asia." By Daniel Chester French. United States 

Custom House 50 

The Duke's Plan of New Amsterdam ... 54 

Joost Hartgers' View of New Amsterdam . 54 

George Washington. By J. Q. A. Ward. Sub- 
Treasury Building "74 

"Africa." By Daniel Chester French. United 
States Custom House ...... 88 

"England." By Charles Grafly. United States 

Custom House 88 

" New Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century." By 

Elmer E. Garnsey 92 

xiii 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

" France." Bjf Charles Grafly. United States Cus- 
tom House 92- 

Main Portal Trinity Church. By Karl Bitter 104 

Recumbent Statue of Morgan Dix. By Isidore 
Konti. Trinity Church 108 

Bust of Alexander Hamilton. Trinity Church . 108 
John Watts. By George Edward Bissell. Trinity 

Churchyard 108 

Wilson Memorial Cross. Trinity Churchyard . 116 

Reverse of Wilson Memorial Cross .... 116 

All Saints' Chapel 120. 

City Hall. The Wall View 126 

Corridor Screen. City Hall 126 

Rotunda and Stairway. City Hall . . . .132. 

The Portico. City Hall 132 

The Mayor's Reception Room. City Hall . . 138 

" The Marquis de Lafayette." By Samuel F. B. 
Morse 138 

Nathan Hale. By Frederick MacMonnies . 142 

Horace Greeley. By J. Q. A. Ward . .148 

" Alexander Hamilton." By John Trumbull . .156 

Peter Cooper. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens . .168 

Manhattan Bridge. Bowery Terminal . . 176 

" Commerce." Detail of Manhattan Bridge . 176 

Washington Arch 184 

"The Delicate Spire of St. John's." By Jessie 

Banks 194 

" St. John's from York Street." By Anne Gold- 
thwaite 194 



ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

PAGE 

" Washington the Soldier." Detail of Washington 
Arch 202 

" Washington as President." Detail of Washington 
Arch 210 

" The Ascension." By John La Farge. Church of 

the Ascension 218 

Henry Whitney Bellows. By Augustus Saint- 
Gaudens. All Souls' Church . . . .232 

Equestrian Statue of Washington. By Henry Kirke 
Browne 240 

The Farragut Statue. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens 24<8 

Interior. Madison Square Presbyterian Church . 254 

" Wisdom." By Henry Oliver Walker. Appellate 
Court House 260 

" January." By Edward Simmons. Waldorf- 
Astoria 268 

" Cattle Fair: Bowling Green." By Albert Herter. 
Hotel McAlpin 272 

" The Jewels." By Gilbert White. Hotel McAlpin 272 

Frieze. By Andrew O'Connor. St. Bartholomew's 
Church 276 

" Welcome." By John La Farge. Window in resi- 
dence of Mrs. George T. Bliss .... 282 

Edwin Booth Memorial Window. By John La Farge. 

Church of the Transfiguration . . . .282 

"Romance." By Paul Wayland Bartlett. New 

York Public Library 288' 

New York Public Library. Erecting the Statues . 288 

William Cullen Bryant. By Herbert Adams . . 294 

The Hunt Memorial. By Daniel Chester French . 298 



xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



University Club Library. Decoration by H. Siddons 

Mowbray 304- 

Equestrian Statue of William Tecumseh Sherman. 

By Augustus Saint-Gaudens .... 310 

Plan of the Plaza 310 

Interior. Metropolitan Museum 324 

Head of Balzac. By Rodin 324 

Portrait of Henry G. Marquand. By John S. 

Sargent 332 

Details of Frieze. By Isidore Konti. Gainsborough 

Building 346 

The Maine Monument 350 

" The Pacific." Detail of Maine Monument . . 350 
Equestrian Statue of Jeanne d'Arc. By Anna 

Vaughan Hyatt 358 

Firemen's Monument. By H. Van Buren Magonigle 364 

" Duty." Detail of Firemen's Monument . . 364 

Gate to Belmont Chapel. Cathedral of St. John the 

Divine 370 

Recumbent Figure of Bishop Henry Codman Potter 376 

Relief. By Karl Bitter. Carl Schurz Monument . 376 

Seth Low Memorial Library 380 

" Alma Mater." Columbia University Library 380 

Fountain of the God Pan. By George Gray Barnard 384 
Detail of the Fountain of the God Pan . . .384 

" The Old Tulip Tree. Inwood." By Ernest Lawson 392 

« The Duchess of Alba." By Goya ... 402 
" Washington at Valley Forge." By Henry Merwin 

Shrady 408 



ILLUSTRATIONS xvii 

PAGE 

Portrait Statue of James S. T. Stranahan. By 

Frederick MacMonnies 414)'^ 

" The Horse Tamer." By Frederick MacMonnies . 422 "^ 

" James McNeil Whistler." By Giovanni Boldini . 430 / 

Detail of "Earth" Panel. By Paul Manship. 

Western Union Building 438/ 

" The Music of Antiquity." By Edward H. Blash- 

field. In residence of Mr. Adolph Lewisohn . 444*^ 

Detail of Ceiling. By H. Siddons Mowbray. Mor- 
gan Library 448. 

Drawing for Panel on Morgan Library . . . 448 

" Proving it by the Book." By Maxfield Parrish . 452 • 



A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 



A LOITERER IN 
NEW YORK 

I 

THE PICTURE 

New York has supreme advantage over most 
cities of the world in the impressiveness of its 
approach. There is something to be said for all 
the means of ingress, something prognostic of its 
inordinate modernity, of its immense mechanical 
superiority, of its intolerance of everything that is 
not of the newest and the latest and the best, 
according to the American standard; but for the 
stranger, who has never seen the city, particularly 
one whose quest is character and individuality 
rather than convenience or speed — and we are 
speaking to loiterers — it is worth the expenditure 
of time and trouble to make what detour may be 
necessary in order to arrive by water. 

The whole sweep through the rough salt waters 
of the Lower Bay; the passage through the Nar- 
rows into the Upper Bay, all windy, fresh, exhil- 

16 



16 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

arating, lead dramatically up to the supreme in- 
delible impression of a city rising from the sea, 
as has so often been said. 

The vision thus comes with surprise and splen- 
dour. Mirage-like in the offing, its white towers 
detach themselves only partially from the back- 
ground of bright skies, each detail coming grad- 
ually out until the essence of the thing which is 
New York is there before you with its largest 
suggestion. Through that vivid clearness of 
atmosphere the impending city looms — a bristling 
promontory pointing its tall, sharp end, incon- 
ceivably planted with incredible masses of pro- 
digious feats of stone-faced ironmongery, into the 
very eye of the spectator. 

To the excitement of the moment of realization 
every great and small thing contributes. There 
is no laziness in a prospect where the chief end 
of life seems to be transportation, expressed in 
the restless, feverish desire of every craft afloat 
to get quickly somewhere else; this sensation of 
hurry and flurry augmented by the wind and the 
tide, animated by the same desire for displacement 
and unrest. All this is carried on with the fine 
unconsciousness that bespeaks the metropolis. The 
tugs, the ferries, the minor craft, the ships, bent 
on their separate ways, independent of mien and 



THE PICTURE 17 

action yet taking one another into account, accept- 
ing jostlings and delays amiably with a philosophy 
born of hfelong dealings with crowds. 

The city, deposited at the water's edge, comes 
with sudden revelation, yielding at first glance its 
salient features. Individual buildings rise to fan- 
tastic heights above the compact pile, giving light- 
ness and variety to the aerial line. The smoke 
which curls about their towers mingles with the 
clouds. Everything is in excess. League long 
bridges fling themselves in abandonment across 
turbulent tidal rivers — great arms that span vast 
spaces with hands that grasp, and hold to the 
parent island, those newly acquired boroughs now 
proud to count themselves technically part of the 
great city. 

Like some gigantic puss-wants-a-comer game 
worked out beyond all hope of joy for the per- 
former, these bridges contribute to that same 
insensate desire for change that animates the river 
craft,^ their immeasurable lengths traversed by 
ceaseless belts of concatenated cars condemned to 
a sort of treadmill destiny staggering in its mag- 
nitude. 

In all weathers, in all seasons, at all times of 
day or night, the island, from whatever point of 
observation, is a thing of wonder and delight. In 



18 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the early morning it shines and glistens in the 
dazzling sun; its walls giving back white efful- 
gence, in marvellous contrast to the blueness of 
an habitually cloudless sky, and the deeper note 
of constantly agitated waters. 

In the late afternoon the thousand windows 
reflect the fire of the setting sun, its colourful after- 
glow, and the island seems ablaze; while at dusk 
the whole becomes enveloped in a soft, Whis- 
tlerian haze, through which the lights in the office 
towers sparkle like stars. The rushing, crowded 
ferries and busy steam tugs, that all day have 
stirred the restless waters, begin a more rhythmic 
action, and make black accents in the sapphire 
blue of the rivers, disappearing into shadowy 
docks, disgorging their heavy loads, floating out 
again — vast platforms of shifting humanity. 

Gradually mellowing, the scene at night is most 
significant of all. Then the towering mass of the 
island deepens to a rich silhouette against the sky, 
luminous with the city glow. The lower end is 
deserted, and looms mysterious and awful in its 
empty vastness. To one who goes in for rich 
effects, there can be nothing more impressive of 
the value of New York, as a unique city, than a 
study of the various and bizarre pictures it makes 
from such vantage points as the Brooklyn Heights, 




UNDER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE 
AFTER A PAINTING BY ERNEST LAWSON 



THROUGH THAT VIVID CLEARNESS OF ATMOSPHERE 
THE IMPENDING CITY LOOMS — " (PAGE l6) 



THE PICTURE 19 

the ferries, or from any of the several bridges. 
There, comfortably ensconced, one may ponder at 
one's leisure upon its most curious unsubstantial 
quality, as of some gigantic Luna Park, its out- 
lines traced by prodigal dots of light, its features 
illumined in so strange a fashion as to make them 
appear translucent; the whole high strung to the 
strident note of perpetual fete. 

This sense of improbability deepens on closer 
acquaintance, when the fantastic notion that the 
whole amazing structure that shifts and changes 
before one's approaching gaze is more or less 
stage land, gotten up for effect, is substantiated 
by the recorded facts; by the comparison of the 
series of prints of old New York, that show this 
very tip of the island to have undergone, in the 
short space of three hundred years, metamorpho- 
ses that leave not one stone standing of the original 
assemblage. 

Rains and fogs but add effect and interest to 
the picture; summer suns and winter snows, char- 
acter. But these are accidents: New York the 
typical is clear, bright, sunny, breezy, invigorat- 
ing. It seems, as it rears its giddy height there at 
the head of the bay, the young, vital city that it 
is — the metropolis of a new world. 

New York has one of the finest of natural bar- 



20 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

hours. It has an entrance of ahout a mile in 
width hetween Fort Hamilton, at the southwest 
angle of the borough of Brooklyn, and Fort 
Wadsworth, the point opposite on Staten Island. 
This entrance, known as the Narrows, leads into 
a fine bay about five miles wide and six miles long, 
within which lie several small islands of indifferent 
interest and little physical grace. 

Bartholdi's impressive statue, " Liberty En- 
lightening the World," stands on Bedloe's Island, 
in the bay, of which it is a distinguishing feature. 
It stands for fine sentiment, as well as aesthetic 
achievement; for it was presented to the people 
of the United States by the people of France, in 
commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary 
of American Independence. The sculptor, Fred- 
eric Bartholdi, was a Frenchman, of whose work 
we have another worthy example in the city — the 
Lafayette in Union Square, presented by the 
French residents of New York, in gratitude for 
American sympathy in the Franco-Prussian War. 
His reputation rests upon that noble monument, 
the " Lion de Belfort," of which a reduced rephca 
dominates the Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. 

Unlike many of the foreign works which have 
been shipped to us, and erected without the artist 
having ever seen the country, let alone the site. 



THE PICTURE 21 

this one was devised after Bartholdi had made the 
trip to the United States, to view the bay in which 
his projected statue was to stand, and picked out 
Bedloe's Island as the spot best adapted for it. 
He wished to make something to impress the im- 
migrant to these shores, and conceived this majestic 
symbol of Liberty holding the flaming torch, that 
should typify for him the freedom and opportunity 
of a new world. As early as 1865 he had this 
ambition, — to make a statue commemorative of 
the friendship between the two countries. 

Unfortunately, at the time that the statue was 
erected, 1885, great stress was laid upon the colos- 
sal proportions of the figure. People were im- 
mensely impressed by its size, having been duly 
instructed upon that inconsequent point, by a 
zealous press, and loved to marvel upon the fact 
that forty persons could stand in its head — if they 
wanted to do so. Everything being relative, the 
attention of a fickle public has been many times 
shifted, with this regard, since the Liberty statue 
used to epater les bourgeois on the grounds of its 
height, many times eclipsed by the towering sky- 
scrapers invented since. 

Bartholdi's statue remains, none the less, an 
imposing feature of the Upper Bay. The attitude 
of the figure is dignified; its mass, sculpturesque; 



22 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

and it has gained immeasurably, since its erection, 
by the lovely patine which time and exposure have 
added to the metal. It is very interesting also 
mechanically, being made of a shell of repousse 
copper, riveted together and supported by an 
interior skeleton of iron, designed by the French 
engineer, Eiffel, who built the famous tower. Pro- 
vision is made for expansion and contraction, 
caused by variations of temperature, and an asbes- 
tos packing is employed to insulate the copper 
from the iron and prevent the corrosion which 
would otherwise be caused by the action of elec- 
tricity, induced by the salt air. 

Governor's Island, near the Battery, is occupied 
by the United States government for military pur- 
poses. It figures in the early history of New 
York, having been purchased from the Indians, 
in 1637, by Wouter Van T wilier, one of the Dutch 
governors, and one of the richest landowners in 
the province. The Indians called the island Pag- 
ganck; and under the Dutch dominion it was 
known as Nooten, or Nut, Island; while under 
English rule it was set aside by the assembly for 
the benefit of the royal governors from which it 
takes its name. After various changes, it was 
ceded to the federal government, by the State of 
New York, in 1800. 



THE PICTURE 23 

Governor's Island was once a part of Long 
Island, so that cattle were driven across the But- 
termilk Channel — so narrow and shallow, in Van 
Twiller's time, that it was easily forded. Boats 
drawing very little water were the only craft able 
to get through the channel, and numbers of these 
took buttermilk from Long Island to the markets 
of New York, embarking at Red Hook Point. 

The Military Museum, on Governor's Island, 
contains many relics of former wars; and Fort 
Jay, formerly Fort Columbus, has a well-pre- 
served moat, drawbridge, parapet, and guns. The 
barracks here are still in use. Castle William, 
from which the sunset gun is fired, is used as a 
mihtary prison. 

Ellis Island, a mile and a half from the Battery, 
was famous, in Dutch days, as Oyster Island, 
owing to the quantities of oysters consumed there. 
It was sold by the state to the national govern- 
ment, in 1808, and has been the immigrant station 
since 1891, when the old Castle Garden was dis- 
qualified for that portentous use. 

On Swinburne and Hoffman Islands, made by 
filling in, in the Lower Bay, are the quarantine 
stations, which were located at Seguine's Point, 
Staten Island, in 1859, and occasioned the upris- 
ing of the people in vigorous protest. The build- 



24 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

ings were burned, together with those at Tomp- 
kinsville, and the country was forced to pay the 
state over an hundred thousand dollars indemnity. 

The approach to New York by water, supple- 
mented by a trip around the Island of Manhattan, 
in one of the sightseeing yachts, will fix once and 
for all the puzzling topography of the original 
city in its relation to its four tributaries ; the whole 
constituting what is known as Greater New York. 
A flight in an aeroplane over the city would be 
even more helpful, and will no doubt one day be 
thoroughly practical. For the present an excellent 
idea of the lay of the land may be got by mount- 
ing into the towers of one or another of the higher 
buildings, from which the whole country lies flat 
below one, as a map. 

Before 1874 the city did not extend beyond 
Manhattan Island. Parts of Westchester County 
were in that year first incorporated, and in 1895 
more territory, in the same county, was annexed. 
The city of Greater New York, incorporated in 
1898, now embraces an area of two hundred and 
eighty-five square miles, and includes five bor- 
oughs, of which the original island is very much 
the smallest, containing but twenty-two square 
miles, or considerably less than one-tenth of the 
combined area. Of the others. Queens has an 




brooklyn bridge 
after a painting by edward w. redfield 

"league-long bridges fling themselves in abandonment across 
turbulent tidal rivers — " (page ij) 



THE PICTURE 25 

area of one hundred and three square miles ; Brook- 
lyn, seventy-two; Richmond, fifty, and Bronx, 
forty-two. 

Passing through the Narrows into New York 
harbour, the borough of Brooklyn, occupying the 
southern end of Long Island, lies on the right; 
Richmond, or Staten Island, to use the old Dutch 
derived name, on the left. The other extensions 
of the city proper lie to the east and north of the 
island, across the East and Harlem Rivers and 
Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Queens lies adjacent to 
Brooklyn, on Long Island; while the Bronx is 
the most northern adjunct to the city, the only 
section to form part of the mainland of New 
York State. 

Jersey City, Hoboken, Paterson, Weehawken, 
and other small Jersey towns and cities, would 
have been comprised in the consolidation of 1898, 
except that they are in a different state. As it 
is they are, in effect, suburban in their relation to 
the city, and their ferries and underground tubes 
bring daily a vast contribution to the sum total 
of workers, shoppers, and pleasure-seekers on 
Manhattan Island. 

The boundary between New York and New 
Jersey was an early point of dispute; the main 
controversy being whether Staten Island was in- 



26 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

eluded in the grant of New Jersey to Carteret 
and Berkeley, by the Duke of York. The point 
was determined in a sportsmanlike manner, when 
the duke, afterwards James II, announced that 
all islands in the bay that could be circumnavi- 
gated in a day should belong to the province of 
New York; and Staten Island was won through 
the enterprise of Captain Christopher Billop, who 
sailed around it in less than twenty-four hours, in 
his famous ship, the Bentley. 

Billop 's delightful old house, built on the large 
tract of land on the southern part of the island, 
presented to him in recognition of his feat, still 
stands, in a state of lamentable decay, a monu- 
ment to his memory, and to civic indifference to 
old landmarks. 



II 

MANAHACHTANIENK 

Antiquaeianism^ pursued for its own sake, has 
smashed some of our most hallowed traditions. 
Yet, so sweet are the ways of error, it moves us 
very little from our romantic conception of Hud- 
son's thrilling voyage in de Halve Moen, and his 
incidental discovery of this region and the river 
named for him, to know, from soulless savants, 
that his was not the first white man's ship seen by 
the Redskins inhabiting these shores. 

Irving, indeed, in his heartily sympathetic man- 
ner, disposes cavaherly of the whole question of 
the Italian claim for the priority of their explorer, 
Giovanni Verrazzano, in a rich footnote to his 
jocose History of New York, not only on the 
ground of his inadequate description, but for the 
more soul-satisfying reason that this Verrazzano 
— for whom he confesses a most bitter enmity — is 
a native of that same Florence that " filched away 
the laurels from the brow of the immortal Colon 
(vulgarly called Columbus), and bestowed them 

37 



28 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

upon its officious townsman, Amerigo Vespucci." 
The incident described in what Irving scurri- 
lously calls " a certain apocryphal book of voy- 
ages by one Hakluyt," relates that, eighty-five 
years before Hudson, the Italian explorer, sailing 
for the king of France, coasted along the eastern 
shore of North America from North Carolina to 
Newfoundland; and, on the way, "found a very 
agreeable situation — the bay (?) — located between 
two small prominent hills, — the Narrows (?) — in 
the midst of which flowed to the sea a very great 
river, — the Hudson (?) — which was deep within 
its mouth." His ship, the Dauphin, a caravel of 
one hundred tons, " anchored off the coast in good 
shelter." 

That the Florentine navigator was a gallant 
captain and a handsome man, in the eyes of his 
compatriots, is evident from the portrait bust, sur- 
mounting the monument to his memory, the work 
of Ettore Ximenes, the Roman sculptor, erected 
by his fellow countrymen, in Battery Park, whence 
he gazes proudly out upon the bay which he is 
said to have first discovered. The letter, generally 
believed to be authentic, in which he made his 
report to Francois I, contains the earHest recorded 
description of any part of the seacoast eventually 
included in the original colonies. 



MANAHACHTANIENK 29 

During the same century, statisticians would 
have us believe, the bay served as a harbour for 
mariners of many nationalities — Spanish, French, 
Portuguese, and Dutch — and it is to be supposed 
that the European fishing craft, that abounded 
further north, put into this excellent natural 
shelter, from time to time, as exigency demanded. 

Cosmopolitan in its primitive history, cosmopoli- 
tan it remains, though these casual discoveries 
produced no results; and it was not until early in 
the seventeenth century, when Henry Hudson, an 
English explorer, in the service of the East India 
Trading Company, of Holland, set foot upon 
these shores, that the real history of our island 
begins. 

The Half Moon, a flat-bottomed, two-masted 
Dutch vessel, of eighty tons' burden, designed to 
meet the peculiar features of navigation about the 
Zuyder Zee, and named in honor of the island of 
Vheland, a vliehoot, was one of many ships owned 
by the East India Company, a great trading cor- 
poration, organized at Amsterdam, in 1602. 

Hudson was an experienced explorer, having 
twice been sent by merchants of his own country, 
in search of that mythical short cut to the Orient, 
upon which traders and mariners, of this epoch, 
built their fondest hopes. 



30 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

The Dutch owned islands, rich in spices, in the 
Indian Ocean; their only means of access thereto 
was the long, dangerous voyage around the conti- 
nent of Africa, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. 
The extent and breadth of the Western Hemi- 
sphere was unsuspected in those days, and every 
bay or strait or important stream on the Atlantic 
Coast of North America seemed, potentially, the 
entrance to broader waterways to seas, beyond the 
far west, to the farther east. 

The Narrows seemed to an expectant mariner 
ideally to promise, and when the Half Moon 
sailed up the open gates of the majestic river on 
the left of the great bay, Hudson thought he had 
found the passage to the Indies, and pushed on 
as far as Albany, where the shallow waters dis- 
couraged him, and he gave it up. 

The commercial importance of his discovery was 
perfectly clear to so keen a man as Henry Hud- 
son; the failure of his particular quest he had, 
himself, anticipated, in his advice to the company 
before starting out, that he should be permitted 
to investigate the possibilities of a passage west 
of Greenland, through Davis Strait. 

He returned to Holland with his story of the 
shores of his Great River, which he called the 
River of the Mountains. He told of bartering 




night: new YORK FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS 
AFTER A PAINTING BY EDWARD W. REDFIELD 



"then the TOWERING MASS OF THE ISLAND DEEPENS TO A RICH SILHOUETTE 
AGAINST THE SKY, LUMINOUS WITH THE CITY GLOW" (pAGE l8) 



MANAHACHTANIENK 31 

with the Indians; of the fur-bearing animals, 
samples of whose pelts he brought as evidence 
of their richness ; he described the high hills which 
he thought might contain mines of valuable metal ; 
and upon his intelligent report was based the 
whole future development of the company's im- 
mense transactions with this region. 

Hudson, personally, profited nothing of his 
discoveries. He fell out with the Hollanders and 
returned to England, making another voyage, for 
an English company, for the same purpose, and 
discovered the great north bay, which, like the 
river, was later named for him, and there mys- 
teriously perished. The story of his fate has 
worked into the legend of the Hudson Valley and 
its mountainous environment. His crew mutinied, 
and their leader, his son, and seven faithful sailors 
were put into a small boat, and set adrift in the 
great bay and seen no more. Hendrick Hudson 
men still figure in the folk-lore of this romantic 
country. 

The Dutch were just as human as the people 
of other nationalities with regard to their treat- 
ment of heroes and heroines. After he was, pre- 
sumably, dead and gone, they not only named the 
river and bay that he had discovered after Hudson, 
they claimed him bodily and ancestrally for their 



32 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

own, pretending that he was a Dutchman, and 
changing his name to Hendrick in their annals 
and descriptions. 

They followed up his discoveries with the most 
businesslike acumen, and traders were sent out 
immediately upon the explorer's return to Hol- 
land, in 1609. 

The Island of Manhattan, to which the growth 
of the official city confined itself during the first 
three hundred years that succeeded its discovery, 
and which will always mean New York, at least 
to the present generation, no matter how all-em- 
bracing it maj^ become in its need of territory, was 
so named by the Indians who inhabited its shores. 
At least the word, Manhattan, is a derivative from 
the original dialect of the native tribes. 

The Delawares and Mohicans called the island 
where they received the Dutch visitors Manahach- 
tdnienk, which, in the Delaware language, we are 
assured by Bishop Heckewelder, the Moravian 
missionary to the Indians, means " the place where 
we all became intoxicated." 

Historians have pooh-poohed this quaintly 
prophetic significance of a word, indeed, variously 
interpreted, but have failed to impair its peren- 
nial aptness. The name might have been selected 
by many generations of hons viveurs, who have 



MANAHACHTANIENK 33 

made merry in this fashion on the island, includ- 
ing, notably, the present. 

" We have corrupted this name into ' Manhat- 
tan,' " says the missionary, " but not so as to 
destroy its meaning or conceal its origin." " There 
are few Indian traditions," he goes on to tell us, 
" so well supported as this." 

Hudson, on his return to Holland, was detained 
at an English port, and sent his charts and his 
journal to the East India Company by his mate, 
a Netherlander. Though they have disappeared, 
and such parts as were quoted in a contemporary 
publication make no special mention of his land- 
ing in the harbour of New York, we possess a very 
striking tradition of the event as preserved by the 
hospitable tribe who received him. 

The story of the arrival of the Half Moon was 
taken down by Heckewelder, from the mouth of 
an intelhgent Delaware Indian, and given, with 
much picturesque data, in all simplicity, in his 
" History of the Indian Nations," published by the 
American Philosophical Society, in 1818. 

The Indians described themselves as greatly 
perplexed and terrified when they beheld a strange 
object, of great size, in the offing. During the 
hours that it took a sailing vessel to approach, 
they were thrown into a panic of fear and appre- 



34 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

hension, not knowing what visitation to expect 
out of the horizon, that encompassed their knowl- 
edge of space. Their fears were only augmented, 
when it was reported to them by the runners sta- 
tioned along the shore, that the object appeared 
to be a huge house or canoe, and could only con- 
jecture that they were about to receive a visit from 
Mannitto — the Great or Supreme Being. 

Anxious to propitiate him, lest his object should 
be to punish them for their misdeeds, the chiefs 
instructed the women to prepare a feast in his 
honour, and, in their distracted way, ordered a 
great, spectacular dance to be given, hoping to 
please him and to show their respectful intentions. 
Chiefs from all the neighbouring territory were 
warned of the impending danger and congregated 
together with their tribes, in great agitation and 
bewilderment, not knowing how to meet so august 
a visitor, nor what his intentions with regard to 
themselves might be. 

Meanwhile fresh runners, from the lookout 
places, came with the news that the large house 
approaching was of various colours, and crowded 
with living creatures. The Indians then thought 
that Mannitto must be bringing them some new 
kind of game and rejoiced exceedingly at this 
mark of favour. Soon, however, it was spread 



MANAHACHTANIENK 35 

abroad that the living creatures were men, like 
themselves, only with white skins, and that among 
them was a gorgeous godlike man in a red coat 
all glittering with gold lace, who seemed to be 
their chief. 

The Indians could no longer doubt that this was 
indeed their Mannitto, come in person, with his 
retinue, and their excitement and agitation knew 
no bounds. Soon the big house, some said canoe, 
came near to the shore, and the Indians, unable 
to restrain themselves, pushed out in their small 
craft, or ran along the bank, answering the shouts 
of the sailors with their strange cries, and assisting 
them to land with every sign of hospitality and 
welcome. 

Never doubting that they were in the presence 
of the Supreme Being, they only marveled that 
their Mannitto should not be a red man like them- 
selves, but should have fair skin. However, the 
gorgeousness of his apparel, and the respect with 
which his suite treated him, left no room for ques- 
tion, and their only thought was to propitiate 
the visitor. 

With this end in view, all went smoothly until 
the resplendent one sent one of his attendants 
back to the ship for a hachliach (properly a gourd, 
but applied also to bottles and decanters) and a 



36 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

glass, out of which the chief poured himself some 
dark liquid and drank it with significant gestures 
and friendly looks. He then directed another 
glassful to be poured out and this he passed to 
the nearest Indian, who took it, smelled of it, 
bowed low and passed it on to his neighbour. In 
this fashion the glass went round the circle of 
wondering chiefs, until a strong brave chief 
stepped forward, took the glass, and harangued 
the others at length upon the risk of exciting 
their Mannitto's ire by the refusal to drink the 
potion prepared for them. " I will drink it," he 
said, "let the consequences be what may; for it is 
better for one chief to die than for a whole tribe 
to be destroyed." 

So saying this valiant warrior drained the cup 
to the dregs. The others watched breathless, in 
anticipation of the direst results. Nothing hap- 
pened for a moment, when the giant chieftain 
began to sway backwards and forwards, and 
finally fell to the ground, apparently dead. When 
he regained consciousness, he staggered to his feet, 
and described in glowing terms the effect of the 
potion, how happy he had felt, what dreams had 
visited his sleep, and urged his fellows to try it. 
This was done; more liquor was brought from the 
boat and the day was spent in wild intoxication. 



MANAHACHTANIENK 37 

"As the Whites became daily more familiar 
with the Indians," Hecke welder goes on to tell 
us, " they at last proposed to stay with them, and 
asked only for so much ground for a garden spot, 
they said, as the hide of a bullock, then spread 
before them, would cover, or encompass. The 
Indians readily granted this apparently reasonable 
request; but the Whites then took a knife and, 
beginning at one end of the hide, cut it up to a 
long rope, not thicker than a child's finger, so that 
by the time the whole was cut it made a great 
heap; they then took the rope at one end and 
drew it gently along, carefully avoiding its break- 
ing. It was drawn out into a circular form, and 
being closed at the ends, encompassed a large 
piece of ground." 

Ignorant of what is related of Queen Dido, in 
ancient history, and that the Dutchmen were 
simply practising classic tricks upon them, this 
cunning equally surprised and delighted the sim- 
ple and confiding Indians, who allowed the suc- 
cess of the artifice good-humouredly and made their 
visitors cordially welcome. 

So much for the initial step in acquiring foot- 
hold on the Island of Manhattan. 



Ill 

DUTCH DOMINION 

The lofty aims that inspired the founding of 
Boston and Philadelphia and some other of the 
oldest cities of North America had no part in the 
settlement of New York. If the Indians named it 
in honour of conviviality, the Dutch claimed it for 
the purposes of commercialism ; and if the attempt 
to take the aesthetic view is invariably blighted, as 
James has said, by this most salient characteristic 
— the feature that has persisted through the few 
centuries of its progress — one must not blame too 
harshly a city that was wronged from the start. 

It was, indeed, with no idea of founding a city 
that the first traders were sent here under Hen- 
drick Christiaensen, in 1610, to follow up Hudson's 
account of the business to be conducted on the 
island. Between this year and 1616, when he was 
killed by an Indian at Fort Nassau, Christiaensen 
was the most active skipper concerned in the many 
voyages to the Hudson River. 

During this time no permanent landings were 



DUTCH DOMINION 39 

made; the Dutch traders lived upon their boats 
in the harbour, remained only long enough to 
secure a cargo of pelts, and speedily returned to 
Holland to reap their harvest and prepare for 
fresh voyages. 

The first homes of white men built upon the 
island v^^ere the result of an accident. Christiaen- 
sen had entered into partnership with Adriaen 
Block, the commander of the Tiger. While this 
ship lay at anchor in the bay, in the direct course 
that the Staten Island ferryboats now take, it 
took fire, one cold November night, and Block and 
his men were forced to swim ashore, and to build 
for themselves the famous four huts known to tra- 
dition as the Block houses. A tablet, placed on 
the facade of No. 41 Broadway, marks the sup- 
posed site of the Block houses, the first habitation 
of white men on the Island of Manhattan. 

Block spent the winter building a new ship, 
which he called the Onrust, or Restless, the first 
ship to be built in this region, and the second made 
by white men in America. She rendered much 
service in exploring Long Island Sound, and is 
thought to have been the first vessel to pass 
through the waters of Hell Gate. 

The year 1614 is memorable in the history of 
New York, for then the United New Netherland 



40 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Company was formed. This established the name 
of the province. New Netherland, and opened the 
duly chartered commerce of the Hudson River. 
About this time Fort Manhattan was built — a 
rough stockade intended as a temporary shelter 
for the factors of the company while engaged in 
stripping the island of furs, which it was expected 
could be accomplished in a few years. The life 
of this trading organization was limited by its 
charter to three years and four voyages, to be 
completed before January 1, 1618. 

Fort Manhattan was simply a trading post of 
ephemeral construction — a redoubt. According to 
some writers, it stood " just south of Bowling 
Green," according to others " on the site of the 
McComb mansion," at what is now 39 Broadway. 
Others, again, declare that neither it nor the Block 
houses had existence on the island, at least at this 
epoch in its history. Some confusion seems to 
have existed, in the minds of early historians, be- 
tween the doings of the United New Netherland 
Company and the West India Trading Company, 
formed by the rich fur traders of Holland, about 
1621. 

The West Indies then included every country 
to be reached by sailing west from Holland. It is 
probable that no one understood much of the vast- 




"IMIIANS (IF MAXHATT. 
PANEL IN THK WASH INK 



■,H S(H(,()L (PAGE 450) 




"LANDING OF IlENKV HUDSON," BY BARRY FAULKNER 

PANEL IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL (PAGE 450) 



DUTCH DOMINION 41 

ness of the new continent; and New Netherlands 
was vaguely referred to as including the territory 
along the Atlantic Ocean now embraced by the 
states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, 
and extended inland as far as the company might 
care to send colonists. 

The Dutch West India Company received from 
the States-General enormous powers, including the 
exclusive privilege of trading in the province of 
New Netherland for twenty years. Merely in 
order to protect its commercial interests from pos- 
sible Indian raids, or the encroachments of neigh- 
bouring English colonists, was an attempt at per- 
manent settlement or colonization made. Leaven- 
worth, Denver — numerous western cities were 
founded in the same way, yet none has so fully, 
so flamboyantly achieved its destiny. Founded 
for trade, by trade. New York owes its very 
existence to the commercial enterprise of the 
doughty Hollanders. 

As a remarkable instance of the familiar reflec- 
tion that " you can't beat the Dutch," it is freely 
quoted on all sides, that Peter Minuit, the first 
Dutch Governor of the Province of New Nether- 
land, bought the entire Island of Manhattan from 
the unsuspecting savages for sixty guilders, cur- 
rently estimated at $24 of our national currency. 



42 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Some historians take consolation in the modifying 
statement that the purchasing value of this neat 
and tidy sum equalled $120 of " our money," 
ignoring, in this pitiful reckoning, the fact that 
the barter was made in beads and baubles, such 
as pleased the eye of the simple native, and not in 
coin of the realm. Mrs. Van Rensselaer briskly 
disposes of any false sentiment on this score by 
remarking that " of course Minuit gave, instead 
of useless money, articles that had an immense ( ! ) 
value in the Indians' eyes ; " and lays doubtful 
unction to her soul in the assertion that they were 
not (technically) dispossessed of their island, but 
merely pledged, " like tenants at will to yield from 
time to time such portions of it as the white men 
might need — if, indeed, many of them used Man- 
hattan as an actual abiding-place. The island, for 
the most part, seems to have been uninhabited 
although constantly frequented by the savages 
who lived on the neighbouring shores." 

Be this amazing reasoning as it may, and, even 
admitting the hypothesis, it leaves one wondering 
how the present-day commuters would feel to have 
their holdings, as distinguished from their places 
of residence, so nonchalantly rated, the lurid fact 
remains; and the sum, inflated to its Nth purchas- 
ing power, fails of impressiveness as compared 



DUTCH DOMINION 43 

with the recent seHing price ($576 per square 
foot) of land on the corner of Wall Street and 
Broadway, within a stone's throw of the place of 
original sale. 

This place of original sale, or original robbery, 
this place of monumental taking, as of candy from 
a child, is pointed out as the rocky point of land, 
since known as the Battery, and the time — the 
month of May, 1626. 

Guileless as they seemed — these chiefs of the 
Manhattoes and Wickquaskeeks — their bargain 
was not unconditioned. They reserved for them- 
selves the hunting rights in the most prolific part 
of the island, whose resources none knew so well 
as they — the richly wooded section now known as 
Inwood ; and they enforced their claim, when ques- 
tioned, by two wars and a massacre which depopu- 
lated the Bouwerie farms and almost annihilated 
the httle hamlet of Haarlem, until their rights 
were recognized in equity and the Dutch magis- 
trates bought them off at a material advance on 
their original estimate of values. 

The Dutchman's wildest dreams of avarice were 
as disproportionate to the stupendous statement of 
growing valuations with which we are at 
every turn confronted, as were the modest de- 
mands of the aborigine to Minuit's excellent 



44 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

knowledge of the bargain he had so unscrupu- 
lously driven. 

Geologists tell us that the trap rock under the 
streets of New York is the oldest part of the sur- 
face of the earth, a fact which lends colour to the 
contrasting and perennial rejuvenation of the 
unfinished city. The Island of Manhattan is thir- 
teen and one-half miles in length, with an average 
width of one and three-quarter miles ; its maximum 
width being at Fourteenth Street, where it is two 
and one-quarter miles across. The total area is 
about twenty-two square miles or twenty-two thou- 
sand English acres. 

The surface of the island is still undulating and 
rocky, and in its original state presented many ob- 
stacles to the sober ideals of the city plan, which 
insisted up levelling and grading in the interest 
of those " pettifogging " parallelograms, which 
have irritated no writer more perhaps than Mr. 
Henry James, from whom one borrows the quali- 
fying adjective. 

At Washington Heights, the ground rises to an 
altitude of 238 feet from the Hudson, but slopes 
abruptly towards the east where there is a level 
stretch, formerly known as the Harlem Flats. 
Farther to the south, the elevation continues as 
a central ridge with sloping ground on each side. 



DUTCH DOMINION 45 

With the exception of the Harlem plain and an 
extensive bed of beach sand to the south and east 
of City Hall, the island is chiefly rock, overlaid 
with a generally shallow glacial drift deposit. The 
greater part of the city is built on a rock founda- 
tion, except where the glacial deposit is deep and 
in the beach sand where pile foundations are 
necessary. 

The Hudson River was called by its discoverer 
the " Great River " or the Groot Rivier. After 
1623 it was sometimes called the Mauritius, in 
honour of Prince Maurice of Orange ; and by others 
it was known as the Manhattan. The Indians 
called it the Cohohatated or Shatemuc or Mohican- 
nittuck. Mariners knew it as the North River, in 
contradistinction to the South River (the Dela- 
ware) also discovered by Hudson, and by this 
name New Yorkers proper invariably speak of it. 

Until the organization of the provincial govern- 
ment under the first governor, such colonists as 
had ventured sporadic settlement of the island had 
been under the provisional protection of Cornelius 
Jacobsen May, who was sent out with the first 
families and put in charge of the affairs of the 
company. Rude huts were put up in the vicinity 
of the fort, and Pearl Street, the first identified 
roadway, came into existence. Pearl Street was 



46 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

at this time the water front and followed the shore, 
leading from the fort to the Brooklyn Ferry at 
Peck Slip. 

Peter IVIinuit, in his capacity as governor, was 
invested, by the West India Company, with full 
authority over all the Dutch lands in America. He 
organized a government consisting of a koopman, 
who was secretary of the province; a schout- 
fiscal, a sort of sheriff, attorney general, and 
custom officer combined; and a council of five 
men. 

He laid out the lines of a fort on the site of the 
present Custom House, on the spot where the fur 
traders' stockade had stood. This he called Fort 
Amsterdam. Built of earth and stone and sur- 
rounded by cedar palisades, it was large enough 
to shelter the whole community in case of danger; 
and having four bastions, it rose proudly above the 
little group of settlers' houses clustered about its 
walls. The shore line was much less extended in 
those days; the water came up to State Street on 
the south, while Pearl Street followed the bank 
of the East River, as has been said, and on the 
other side from Greenwich Street, the land sloped 
away in marshy flats to the water's edge. The 
spot where Castle Garden now stands was then an 
island two hundred feet from the shore; so that 




COLONEL ABRAHAM DE PEYSTER, BY GEORGE EDWIN BISSELL. 
BOWLING GREEN (PAGE 88) 



DUTCH DOMINION 47 

the fort stood close to the water and easily com- 
manded the entrances to the North and East 
Rivers, and the junction of their currents in the 
Upper Bay. In the earliest prints of the settle- 
ment, such as that published by Joost Hartger 
in 1651, it stands out as the dominating landmark 
of the little dorp or village that occupied the 
southern end of the Manhattan Island. 

As the Custom House faces Bowling Green 
to-day, so the main gate of the fort opened on 
that same historic spot nearly three hundred years 
ago, for it has maintained its identity as a pubhc 
garden spot throughout the entire development 
of the city. First known as " The Plaine," it was 
reserved for all the uses of a village green — a play- 
ground for children, a parade ground for soldiers, 
the market-place, the annual cattle show; while 
under English rule a Maypole dance on the green 
brought youths and maidens to the spot at the 
appropriate season. It was indeed the general 
meeting-place, and here, upon occasion, the Indians 
met the Whites and made treaties and smoked 
the pipe of peace. 

The governor's house was inside the fort. The 
large warehouse for storage of furs, the staple 
export, was outside. This was a stone building, 
thatched with reeds; and in its second story was 



48 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

a room used as a place of worship by the budding 
community. 

The early history of New Netherland is domi- 
nated by the will and ambitions of the four Dutch 
governors. Peter Minuit bought the island, built 
the fort, established the government, and divided 
the lower part of the island into farms — called in 
the Dutch vernacular, bouweries — which were por- 
tioned out to the settlers in an arbitrary fashion. 
Of these an interesting record is preserved in the 
well-known Duke's Plan, a draft made in 1664 
for the Duke of York upon the capture of the 
town by the English. It shows the disposition of 
property; the existing roadways, later to become 
streets; with some extensions beyond the actual 
limit of the city, fixed by a rude fence which ex- 
tended across the island on the line of the present 
Wall Street, and which had been built to keep 
cattle from straying off into the wilderness. The 
Duke's Plan is in the custody of the British Mu- 
seum, but fac-similes of it are familiar enough, and 
it has been repeatedly reproduced. 

Wouter Van Twiller devoted his opportunities, 
as second Dutch governor, to the acquisition of 
property for himself, buying from the Indians 
the spot known as Governor's Island, as well 
as Randall's and Ward's Islands in the East 



DUTCH DOMINION 49 

River; and became the richest landowner in the 
colony. 

William Kieft, called William the Testy, rebuilt 
houses and put down smugglers. He instituted the 
fairs that were held on Bowling Green, where 
cattle and pigs were exhibited, and this brought 
so many people to the island that a tavern had 
to be erected to house the transients. This was 
a large stone house, of typical Dutch architecture, 
such as one sees to-day in Amsterdam, with the 
odd gable end pointed towards the street; and 
it stood at the head of Coentie's Slip, in Pearl 
Street, where a bronze tablet, erected by the 
Holland Society, at No. 73, marks the site of 
Kieft's Stadt Herhergh, or tavern, which 
became the Stadt Huys, or first City Hall, 
in 1653-54. 

The nomenclature of the streets of the old town 
followed the lines of least resistance, and are rich 
in significance. Pearl Street, including Stone, 
followed the water side and took its name from 
the quantity of pearly shells left there by receding 
tides; it was the first defined roadway on the 
island, though Broadway is said to have existed 
as an Indian trail. A second road stretched up 
through the island, through the houweries, and 
leading to outlying farms, and may be identified 



50 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

as the old Bowery, or Bouwerie Lane, as it then 
was called. 

During Governor Kieft's administration the 
first of the Indian wars, that occasionally devas- 
tated the settlement, was precipitated by the gov- 
ernor's treachery towards the natives, and so 
thorough were they in their vengeance that scarcely 
an hundred men were left to tell the tale, and the 
country was laid waste. 

Till now the barrier for confining the cattle had 
been but a peaceful precaution; in 1653 it gave 
way to a strong city wall or palisade, built by 
Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch governors, 
to defend New Amsterdam against the Indians. 
Bastions stood on sites in the rear of Trinity 
churchyard. No. 4 Wall Street, the Sub-Treasury, 
and at the head of Hanover Street; and at 
Pearl Street a Half Moon Battery was located, to 
protect the water gate. The wall stood until 1699, 
and gave the name to the busy thoroughfare which 
now marks its extent. 

Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of 
New Amsterdam, is the picturesque and sterling 
figure which identifies itself indissolubly with the 
fortunes of the early settlers. While the others 
retired to Holland after short and selfish domina- 
tion, he not only endeared himself to the people. 



"FORT ORAXCK"' ( U,B\\V) 1\ TITC ^K\ F XTEH XTH ( INJURY 
DECORATION IX THF C0LLELT(IR\ ROOM. I'X 1 Tl I) STATI S 
CUSTOM HOUSE, BY H.MI-R E. ( ARX SEY (PA(.F 95) 



ASIA^ BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 
ENTRANCE UNITED STATES CUSTOM 
HOUSE (page 90) 




DUTCH DOMINION 51 

but cared enough for this country to return to it 
after his unhappy surrender to the EngHsh, and to 
make it his home until his death. His bones rest 
in a charming old church, built on the site of an 
older one that he himself erected on his houwerie, 
far beyond the city hmits of his time. 

Stuyvesant was a faithful servant of the West 
India Company, having lost his leg fighting in 
its service. Under him the colony became a city, 
with a mayor, two burgomasters, and five scliep- 
ens; and these, excepting always the mayor, pre- 
sided over the trials which were held in the stone 
house, which Kieft had built, and which now be- 
came the Stadt Huys, at the head of Coentie's 
Slip. 

Governor Stuyvesant built him a house, in 1658, 
called White Hall, and the road which led to it 
still bears the name of the house, which stood at 
what is now the southwest corner of Pearl and 
Whitehall Streets. Perel Straet in those days 
extended only as far as the governor's house, 
after passing which the name changed to the 
Strand. 

Coentie's Slip is one of the few preserved Dutch 
names which used to abound in this region. It 
was an inlet in the days when the Stadt Huys was 
built, and its peculiar name comes from a cor- 



52 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

ruption of Conraet Ten Eyck, as the owner of 
the land about here was called. The filled-in slip, 
now buried beneath Jeanette Park, accounts for 
the width of the street. 

I think it is Felix Oldboy who said that a 
Dutchman no sooner finds himself housed than 
he looks about to see where he can dig a canal. 
The land settled by the Netherlanders on Manhat- 
tan Island gave ample opportunity for the exercise 
of this ruling passion. The coast line was full of 
little inlets, the interior swampy, and badly 
drained by a little creek running through what is 
now Broad Street; and the whole conformation 
of the lower island adapted itself readily to the 
character imposed by a Dutch community. 

The swampy region extending along Broad 
Street from Exchange Place to South William 
Street was reclaimed by the digging of a glorious 
Dutch canal through Broad Street (known to the 
burgomasters as the Heere Gracht) to Beaver 
Street, north of which it narrowed into a ditch. 
A street was laid out on both sides of the canal, 
and it became a favourite place of residence. The 
English, with their horror of smells, filled it up 
after it had become a public nuisance, in 1676. 
The swampy character has recently shown its 
persistence when excavations were made for cer- 



DUTCH DOMINION 53 

tain high buildings, and it has been necessary to 
dig deep to secure solid foundations. 

Broadway, even in those days, was the central 
artery of New York and is said to have existed 
as an Indian trail before the Whites landed on 
the island. It was called Heere Straat, or Breede- 
weg by the Dutch, the latter, of course, Hollandish 
for its present name, derived from the broad way 
that led from the entrance of the old fort up to 
the gate in the wall. The street was wide near 
the fort to give room for the soldiers to drill. 

The original Dutch city, of which the present 
Wall Street was the northern boundary, grew in 
a haphazard manner. Settlers built their houses 
wherever they pleased, and roadways were opened 
to give access to the houses: the footpaths and 
cowpaths, and canals and ditches, incidentally 
established, developed into thoroughfares, and con- 
tributed to the tangle of streets characteristic of 
lower New York. Pearl Street, laid out in 1633, 
was the first residential street, the original huts 
of the transient settlers being built along the water 
front under the guns of the fort. After, Pearl 
Street was extended to become, in a way, the most 
curious street in New York. It begins and ends 
in Broadway, describing an irregular half-circle 
in its path. " Straight like Pearl Street " has 



54 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

become a figure of speech with certain merchants 
of the present city in giving the character of their 
business associates. 

It is certainly a great pleasure, in a city so 
doomed to stupid regularity, to find this little 
oasis where one can lose one's self, and where 
names of streets have association and interesting 
significance. New Street was " new " in 1679, and 
is still thus distinguished; Stone Street changed 
its name from Brouwer Straat, derived from the 
company's brewery, at No. 10, to its present ap- 
pellation because it was the first street of the city 
to be paved (with cobblestones in 1657) . Hanover 
Square was called for George I, of Hanover; and 
William Street took its name from William of 
Orange, later William III. 

When war was declared between England and 
Holland, in 1652, the population of New Amster- 
dam numbered about one thousand people, con- 
stituting a thriving little community. That they 
had little loyalty to their native land is certain 
from the small show of resistance that was made 
to the change of government. 

In 1664 Charles II, basing his claim to the 
locality upon the voyages of the explorers John 
and Sebastian Cabot (whose discoveries of the 
same region, it was alleged, antedated Hudson's 




THE DUKi;"s PLAN. RKPRODLTKl) FROIVr A FACSl.MII.K OF THE ORIGINAL IN THI 
BRITISH MUSEUM : "A DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWNE OF MAXNADOS, OR 
NEW AMSTERDAM, AS IT WAS IN SEPTEMBER, 1663."' MADE F( R THE 
DUKE OF YORK WHEN THE ENGLISH FIRST TOOK POSSESSION 
OF THE PROVINCE (PAGE ^5) 



JOOST HARTGERS VIEW OF NEW AMSTERDAM 
THE EARLIEST KNOWN PICTURE OF 
NEW YORK (page 46) 




DUTCH DOMINION 55 

by about one hundred years) simply gave New 
Netherland to his brother, James, Duke of York. 

In the suite of this high-handed proceeding the 
Duke at once sent over four ships filled v^^ith sol- 
diers to take possession of his property. The town 
was ill protected. The fort was such in name only, 
and, as historians have pointed out, Stuyvesant 
and the other governors had made frequent com- 
plaint to headquarters of its insecurity against the 
ravages of goats and cows that roamed the pas- 
tures ; and it stood upon such low ground that from 
the heights in the rear it could be readily over- 
looked. It had not been built with the thought 
of real warfare, but only as a retreat from savage 
inroads and such. Furthermore, the community 
was willing to risk the advantage to itself of a 
change from Dutch to Enghsh rule, hoping for 
greater leniency and freedom under the latter, and 
refused to aid in the defence. 

On September 8, 1664, Stuyvesant, at the head 
of his soldiers, evacuated Fort Amsterdam with- 
out resistance; the English soldiers took posses- 
sion, and the city of New Amsterdam became the 
city of New York; the province of New Nether- 
land became the province of New York; and 
Fort Amsterdam was called Fort James in honour 
of the Duke of York. 



56 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Stuyvesant's story of his surrender was ill 
received by the company in Holland, whither he 
went at once to make his report; and he returned 
to take up his holdings on Manhattan Island, 
established his residence on his former country 
seat, known as the great Bouwerie, not far from 
St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, near the intersection of 
Tenth and Stuyvesant Streets. Here he died, and 
his remains lie undisturbed in the family vault 
included in the foundations of the present church 
edifice. 

The Dutch retook New Nether land in 1673, 
retaining possession for less than a year, during 
which time the city was called New Orange, in 
deference to the Prince of Orange, who, by his 
marriage to the daughter of the Duke of York, 
became William III of England. Within the 
year the complete and final restoration of the 
province was made to England, and the colony 
entered upon the most eventful epoch of its history. 



IV 
ENGLISH RULE 

A PERSPECTIVE map of New York, preserved 
in the du Simitiere Collection of the Philadelphia 
Library, gives the outstanding features of the city 
as it appeared when, by the peace of 1674, it 
became an English province for the second time, 
and was thenceforward gradually to lose its exclu- 
sive Knickerbocker character. 

At this time we may picture an essentially 
Dutch town, built upon the water front, and upon 
canals; its houses presenting their serrated gable 
ends to the street, in true Hollandish fashion. The 
first houses had been of wood, practically one- 
story log cabins ; but as the colony prospered, social 
distinctions arose, and the well-to-do settlers began 
to build their homes of brick and stone. Bricks 
at first were imported from Holland, but, under 
the last of the Dutch governors, yards were opened 
in the outskirts of the town, while the natural 
resources of the island yielded an abundance of 
stone. The gable ends were often of black and 

57 



58 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

yellow bricks, bearing the date of their erection, 
noted in iron figures. The type was distinctly 
Dutch, with small diamond-paned windows and 
large doors, in two sections, so practical for keep- 
ing the children within and at the same time, by 
leaving the upper half open, furnishing all the 
advantages of neighbourliness to the passer-by. 

The fires which ravaged the city during the 
Revolution and subsequent improvements have 
robbed us of every vestige of the old Dutch town; 
but one important heritage persists in the high 
" stoop " (stoep) which the colonials built from 
force of habit, to protect the best rooms from the 
dangers of inundation, a necessary precaution in 
the old country; and thus fastened upon the city 
one of its most characteristic architectural features, 
and upon the vernacular an amusing Dutch- 
derived word, purely local in its usage. 

With thrift and industry the Dutch settlers 
combined the love of pleasure and good cheer. 
They observed the national feast days — Christmas, 
New Year's Day, Easter, Whitsuntide, and St. 
Nicholas Day — and made merry on their individual 
family anniversaries with feasting, games, and 
dance. The custom of New Year's calls, long ob- 
served religiously in New York, was established 
at this time, when no gentleman of social pre- 



ENGLISH RULE 59 

tentions failed to pay his respects to every lady 
of his acquaintance on the first day of the year. 
The ladies, on the other hand, were expected to 
keep open house, and to offer " a piece of cake 
and a glass of wine " to their callers, a courtesy 
so much appreciated in later times, when the 
rivalry between the ladies, in the quality and 
quantity of hospitality offered, became so brisk, 
that the gentlemen were victimized by their own 
gallantry, and fairly incapacitated for making their 
rounds. Thus the custom, by an excess of zeal 
in the observance, defeated its own ends, and died 
a natural, if opprobrious death. 

The chief development of the city, during the 
first hundred years of its founding, was along the 
East River, known as the Salt River in those days, 
its impressive feature to the community being its 
most practical one, its saltness, which meant im- 
mimity from freezing and thus interfering with 
ships and cargoes. The Hudson, though washed by 
salt tides, is inherently fresh, and has been known 
to freeze in bitter weather, and to be frequently 
blocked by ice, washed down in the current from 
the north; whereas the East River, literally an 
arm of the sea, connecting the Upper Bay with 
Long Island Sound, was never subject to these 
inconveniences. 



60 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

A ferry to Brooklyn was started as early as 
1651, from Peck Slip; and the shipping interests 
extended along the East River, bringing ware- 
houses in their train, as well as the establishment 
of business interests of various kinds near to 
the ferry, in order to catch the Long Island 
trade. 

The city sloped away from the high ridge of 
ground along the line of Broadway, which was 
really a distant and unfrequented part of the 
town, while west of this thoroughfare were but 
open fields. This is readily explained by a glance 
at the old maps. 

In the original apportionment of the farms 
on the lower end of the island, provision had 
been made for the benefit of the civil and military 
servants of the West India Company. The Com- 
pany Farm, as it was called, extended west of 
Broadway to the river, between the present Fulton 
and Warren Streets. This land has always been 
held intact, identified under various titles as gov- 
ernment changed. The British, upon occupation 
of the island, passed it over to the private uses of 
the Duke of York, increasing the property by the 
purchase of the farm of Annetje Jans, which ex- 
tended as far north as the present Christopher 
Street. When the Duke of York became king. 



ENGLISH RULE 61 

this tract was known as the King's Farm, and 
when it became the royal property of Queen Anne, 
as the Queen's Farm. 

. This grant as described by Mrs. Lamb in her 
history of New York consisted of sixty-two acres 
granted to Roelof Jans beginning south of War- 
ren Street, extending along Broadway as far as 
Duane Street, thence in a northwesterly direction 
for a mile and a half to Christopher Street, form- 
ing a sort of unequal triangle with its base upon 
the North River. 

Roelof Jans died soon after receiving this grant, 
leaving a wife and four children; and his widow, 
Annetje, married Dominie Bogardus, in 1638, 
whereupon her farm was known as the Dominie 
Bouwerie. When the English took possession of 
the island this grant was confirmed by the govern- 
ment; the heirs sold the farm in 1671 to Governor 
Lovelace; it was afterwards incorporated into the 
King's Farm, and in 1703 was presented by Queen 
Anne to Trinity Church. 

This farm constituted Queen Anne's munificent 
grant to the English Church in the Island of 
New York which has made the Trinity Cor- 
poration at the present day so powerful a factor 
in the growth and development of the city. The 
English Church in the Island of New York meant, 



62 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

in those days. Trinity Church, the parent church 
from which all the rest have sprung. The corpo- 
ration has preserved the grant practically intact, 
and still retains possession of it. This farm for 
many years blocked the westward growth of the 
city, the citizens naturally preferring to build 
where they could acquire title to the land. 

The English rulers of the province did little to 
distinguish themselves, and proved, if possible, less 
to the taste of the colonials than the Dutch gov- 
ernors. Most of them were men of harsh manner, 
despotic in their rule, and chiefly interested in get- 
ting what they could for themselves out of the 
colony. Colonel Richard Nicholls, who was in 
command of the British soldiers when the fort was 
taken, became the first Enghsh governor, and by 
tact and moderation contrived to win the esteem 
of the people. He made little change in the city 
government, and appointed as mayor Thomas 
Willett, a man well known and well liked in the 
community. The " Duke's Laws " proved liberal 
both in letter and in spirit, providing that no 
Christian should be molested for his religious be- 
liefs — an especially grateful clause, carried out in 
practice when, upon the introduction of the Eng- 
lish church in the colony, the Dutch dominie and 
the English chaplain made common use of the 



ENGLISH RULE 63 

church within the fort, one occupying it in the 
morning and the other in the afternoon. 

Nicholls was succeeded by Colonel Francis Love- 
lace, whose effort was all for the growth and bet- 
terment of the province. He established a Mer- 
chants' Exchange, whose meetings were held once 
a week at about where Exchange Place now crosses 
Broad Street, fixing upon that locality its present 
inheritance; and he also started the famous mail 
route to Boston. Each first Monday of the month, 
the mail coach, in the hands of a carrier whom 
Lovelace, in a letter to Governor Winthrop of 
Connecticut, describes as " active, stout, and in- 
defatigable," set out from New York, making its 
first stage Hartford, and expected to return within 
the month from Boston. The first mail from New 
York to Boston, also the first on the continent, 
started on New Year's Day, 1673, following bridle- 
path and Indian trail, directing the course of 
the future highway that still, beyond the Harlem 
River, retains the name — Boston Post Road. 

The interruption in English rule caused by the 
retaking of the province by a Dutch fleet, in 1673, 
as an incident in the naval war then on between 
England and Holland, dislodged Lovelace, and 
when by the treaty of Westminster New Nether- 
land was transferred from the States General to 



64 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Charles II, that monarch restored it to his brother, 
who appointed Edmund Andros, a major of dra- 
goons to the post of governor. It was he who 
caused the passage of the Bolting Act, in 1678, 
which granted New York merchants a monopoly 
of the manufacture of flour, and laid the founda- 
tion of the city's fortunes. So important a mea- 
sure was it that we find it symbolized in the seal 
of New York, whose shield bears the sails of a 
windmill and the two flour barrels in commemo- 
ration of the Bolting Act. The two beavers, al- 
ternating with the barrels between the blades of 
the sail, refer to that earliest industry of the island, 
the fur trade. The sailor and Indian, supporting 
the shield, stand, respectively, for the Duke of 
York, in his character of Lord High Admiral of 
England, and the aboriginal inhabitants of his 
American province. The bald eagle rising from 
a demi-terrestial globe, replaces the crown of the 
original seal. 

Colonel Thomas Dongan, a genial Irishman, 
was the best of the English governors, a man of 
high birth and character, who secured for the prov- 
ince, under the Dongan Charter, in 1686, the most 
definite advance towards self government yet ac- 
corded any of the colonies. This charter of liber- 
ties still forms the basis of New York's civic 



ENGLISH RULE 65 

rights. Amended by Queen Anne, in 1708, and 
further amphfied by George II, in 1730, into the 
Montgomery Charter, it was confirmed by the as- 
sembly of the province in 1732, making New York 
virtually a free city. 

But for the most part these were lawless days, 
and governors came with pomp to be sent away in 
disgrace. Meantime piracy flourished practically, 
it has been thought, under the protection of offi- 
cials of the province. Governor Fletcher was sus- 
pected of sharing in private booty ; and merchants, 
who feared to carry on regular trade as their 
ships were almost sure to be seized, openly bought 
the pirates' cargoes, contending that " they were 
right in purchasing goods wherever found, and 
were not put upon inquiry as to the source from 
which they were derived." Indeed so well did the 
merchants and shipowners of New York and the 
" privateers," as the Red Sea men were politely 
called, understand one another, that the pirate 
captain, in rich yet outlandish garb, was a familiar 
figure in the streets of New York towards the end 
of the seventeenth century. 

With French and English vigilance scouring 
the southern waters in determined effort to put 
down the practice, and increasing defection of 
Gallic and British pirate captains who showed a 



66 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

meek willingness to adopt honesty as the best pol- 
icy, when driven to extremes, the news that pi- 
racy, disguised as privateering, was winked at by 
the New York authorities, circulated rapidly 
among the captains serving under the black flag. 
New York became the universal port of refuge 
where piratical booty was disposed of at enormous 
gains, and no questions asked, for the profits were 
mutual and home products entrusted to the buc- 
caneers for sale at their Madagascar rendezvous 
brought fabulous returns on the original invest- 
ment. 

Suddenly, however, this was all to end with the 
withdrawal of Fletcher and the appointment of 
Lord Bellomont, whose mission was to put down 
piracy at all costs. By a curious irony of fate, 
his first effort in this direction launched the noblest 
pirate of them all, the famous Captain Kidd, a 
Scot, resident of New York, highly recommended 
as a seaman of known honesty and valour, who 
had proved his bravery as a privateer against the 
French, and for some years commanded the 
packet, Antigua, trading between New York and 
London. In 1695, on the recommendation of 
Robert Livingston, a colonist, then in London, 
Bellomont placed Kidd in command of a privateer, 
giving him letters of marque against the French, 



ENGLISH RULE 67 

with a special commission to suppress piracy. His 
ship, the Adventure, sailed from Pljrmouth for 
New York, and from New York to Madagascar, 
with a crew of one hundred and fifty men. He 
was financed by a syndicate and took shares to 
the amount of six thousand dollars, Livingston 
signing his bond for one-half that amount. Thirty 
thousand dollars was subscribed and the profits 
of the cruise, less a royalty of ten per cent for 
the king, were to be divided among the members 
of the syndicate. Just how this peculiar deal 
squared itself with the strict Mne of law and equity 
it was supposed to uphold defies a casual analysis. 
At any rate, the king, though a stockholder, took 
the precaution not to advance the money for his 
share in so equivocal an enterprise. Kidd followed 
the lines of least resistance. Failing as an op- 
ponent of piracy, he succumbed to the entreaties 
or threats of a mutinous crew, replaced his ensign 
with a black flag, and, plundering and sinking 
ships, became a terror of the seas. His adventur- 
ous career ended in 1699, when, having exhausted 
his ingenuity in eluding his pursuers, he appeared 
in the eastern end of Long Island Sound, where, 
burying his treasure, as we are told, on Gardiner's 
Island, he opened communication with Lord Bel- 
lomont, who was then in Boston. Representing 



68 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

himself as the victim of his crew, turned pirate 
against his will, he offered to share a large part 
of his booty with the governor or the syndicate 
of noblemen who had sent him to the East Indies. 
Bellomont heard his story, and, on the ground of 
his failure to account for the Quedah Merchant, 
his last prize, sent him to England, where he was 
tried at Old Bailey, and hanged on Execution 
Dock, in the city of London — the victim of his 
own misdeeds and the scapegoat for a pretty 
complication of political treachery. 

During Lord Bellomont's administration a first 
effort was made to light the streets by means of 
a lantern, fitted with a candle, hung on a pole from 
the window of every seventh house; and a night 
watch was established consisting of four men. 
The governor removed what remained of the city 
wall and laid out Wall Street on the line of the 
fortification; he erected the new city hall in Wall 
Street near Nassau Street, equipped with dun- 
geons for criminals, cells for debtors, a court room, 
and such modern improvements commensurate 
with the city's growth. The city hall also con- 
tained the first library, afterwards known as the 
Society Library. 

Under Governor Hunter, in 1711, the first slave 
market was established at the foot of Wall Street, 



ENGLISH RULE 69 

and negroes began to form a large proportion of 
the city's population. Slave importation into 
New York began some time prior to 1628, and 
reached a climax about 1746, when a census of 
the city revealed the presence of twenty-four hun- 
dred negroes in a total population of less than 
twelve thousand souls. The same insensate fear 
of the unknown and incalculable that led the 
Whites to inhuman treatment of the native In- 
dians was now turned with even more injustice 
against the race which they had imported to these 
shores. Under the constant dread of a servile 
insurrection, rigid and cruel laws regulating the 
conduct of negroes were enforced, and a fury of 
feeling grew up against the slaves, who were 
accused of plotting against their masters and of 
committing the most frightful depredations. 
The slightest infringement of the laws that de- 
prived them of most of the blessings of liberty 
met with instant and unmitigated punishment. 
The burning and hanging of negro slaves, in the 
little valley beyond the Collect Pond, became the 
order of the day, and a most pitiable state of 
affairs ensued, in which the harassed blacks con- 
fessed to crimes of which they were innocent in 
order to save their lives; the panic culminating 
in the famous " Negro Plot," of 1741, only com- 



70 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

parable in its terrible expiation to the witchcraft 
abominations of Salem, in the previous century. 
When it was all over a revulsion of feeling took 
place in favour of the negroes, who, in ten years, 
were admitted to the franchise, while slavery was 
practically abolished, in 1758, by the act declaring 
all children born of slave parents from that time 
free. 

This was New York until about the time of the 
outbreak of the Revolution. 



THE OLD TOWN 

One grows to have favourite spots in New York. 
To me one of the most agreeable is that occupied 
by Ward's heroic statue of the first President, on 
the steps of the Sub-Treasury. Not only does it 
make perhaps the most dignified and consistent 
picture in the whole city; it commands one of the 
really thrilhng prospects on the island. 

The concentrated essence of historic New York 
is confined in this small area spread before you. 
From the steps of the Sub-Treasury it is amusing 
to fancy one's self standing upon one of the ram- 
parts of the ancient wall, overlooking the old 
Dutch town, which lay to the south and east of 
the spectator. The Fort and the Stadt Huys 
dominated the southern view, marking, in their 
relation to this vantage point, opposite angles of 
an imaginary equilateral triangle. 

The region between Coentie's Slip and White- 
hall Street was the site of the first city dock, the 

71 



72 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

corner-stone as one may say of the metropolis, 
the progenitor of our thirty or more miles of 
wharves. It was built by the West India Com- 
pany, whose quaint, round-bottomed, high-pooped 
ships were the first vessels to anchor there. As 
late as 1702 this dock formed almost the sole 
wharfage of the city. 

Made ground has obliterated all trace of this 
dock, and the old Dutch city was destroyed by 
fire, so that no vestige remains to give colour to 
one's mental picture, save the very important one 
— the character and complexity of the old streets. 

The breadth of Broad Street, as one surveys it 
from the portico of the Sub-Treasury, the pecuhar 
bend which it takes at Exchange Place, suggest 
the existence of the old canal, which we know it 
superseded. Bridge Street marks the site of the 
old bridge across the canal; and Beaver Street, 
then Bever Gracht, led to the swamp in Broad 
Street, and was drained by a small canal or ditch. 
In this delightful labyrinth there are no parallels; 
State and Pearl Streets swept in a generous curve 
about the lower end, skirting Battery Park and 
the former shore line; and all sorts of short cuts 
are invited by the unruly way in which streets run 
into and over each other in their intensity of life 
and activity. If historic landmarks are few, a 



THE OLD TOWN 73 

plentiful distribution of tablets, diligently erected 
by the various societies interested in colonial relics, 
marks most of the important sites. 

The statue of Washington, conceived as the 
great legendary figure towards which the whole 
country looked, as to a father, in the days of the 
young republic, stands on the spot where, in 1789, 
he took the oath of office and became the first 
President of the United States. The Sub-Treas- 
ury replaces the second state house of colonial 
days, which, in honour of the great event about to 
take place there, had been remodelled by the 
French architect, L'Enfant, the same who made 
the plan of Washington, and converted into Fed- 
eral Hall. When Chancellor Livingston, who 
administered the oath, exclaimed, " Long hve 
George Washington, President of the United 
States! " thirteen cannon were discharged and the 
shouts of the immense crowd in Wall and Broad 
Streets reechoed the proclamation. 

Pervaded by an interest at once human and 
heroic, Ward's statue is singularly apt and im- 
pressive. The whole harmony of the design sug- 
gests consecration and power, emphasized by the 
simple gesture of the lifted hand, betokening 
reserve and authority; giving as no other statue 
of our hero has done, the immense symbolic weight 



74 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

of his presence. Not self-crowned, like Napoleon, 
he accepts the greatest honour that his country had 
to grant with a simple dignity infinitely more con- 
vincing. Set in the midst of the supreme struggle 
of our greatest city, the figure maintains a large, 
national significance; remains an essentially per- 
manent type and exemplar. 

The statue was erected in 1883, by public sub- 
scription, under the auspices of the Chamber of 
Commerce. At its foot was formerly the original 
slab of brown stone upon which Washington stood 
when taking the oath of office. This is preserved, 
under glass and in a heavy bronze frame, on the 
south wall of the interior of the building. Relic 
hunters may identify parts of the railing of the 
balcony, from which Washington delivered his 
inaugural address, at the Historical Society, and 
in front of the Bellevue Hospital. 

These fragments are all that remain of an 
original historic structure, pulled down, in 1812, 
to make way for the present edifice, which served 
fifty years as the Custom House of New York. 
The building followed the mode of the day, which 
was all for Greek temples. 

Arnold Bennett's disappointment in our famous 
Wall Street as the seething centre of the cele- 
brated "American hustle," now quelled by the 




GEORGE WASHINGTON, BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS "WARD. 

ON THE STEPS OF THE SUB-TREASURY BUILDING (PAGE 73) 



THE OLD TOWN 75 

perfection of the mechanical contrivances that have 
literally transformed the methods of the Stock 
Exchange, was that of the keen traveller alert for 
local colour. Certainly the ingenuity of the inven- 
tions which facilitate the mighty transactions of 
this great bourse have completely changed the 
character for which Wall Street was far-famed. 
The telephones and the annunciator are indis- 
putably the features of the building; and it is 
amusing to compare the old cumbrous methods 
with the perfect installation of scientific devices 
by which a member may be communicated with 
freely, without a spoken word, and without leaving 
his seat. 

In each of the two side walls of the room is a 
great checkerboard, containing twelve hundred 
rectangles of glass. Behind each rectangle is a 
member's number, which may be shown in different 
coloured lights from behind. These lights can be 
so alternated as to make a perfectly intelligible 
sign language, according to a secret code. 

George B. Post, one of the builders of New 
York, was the architect of the building, its con- 
struction having presented a pretty problem, 
attacked courageously; for in it Mr. Post attempt- 
ed to combine all the requirements of the most 
modern of structures with an ornamental, massive 



76 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

fa9ade, topped by a pediment that should rival in 
sculpture the great pediments of the world. Much 
has been sacrificed to secure the feature of the 
building, that vast room, whose ends are simply 
great sheets of glass to afford light for negotia- 
tions of the greatest speculative mart in the world. 
A portico of six Corinthian columns partially dis- 
guises this opening, and behind these columns 
stand mullions, hung from girders overhead, con- 
structed to resist the force of the wind against 
the glass and to support its immense weight. 

The pediment, another fine example of the work 
of John Quincy Adams Ward, has been criticized 
for its lack of constructive significance, the build- 
ing being high and square, behind the facade, 
which is applied like an excrescence to its struc- 
tural face. But the sculpture within the pediment 
calls for serious consideration, and may be ocn- 
sidered one of the interesting artistic features of 
this quarter. 

If the figures, eleven in number, overwhelmingly 
massive, seem to fall out into the street, it is 
because one cannot in a narrow thoroughfare get 
far enough away from the building to see things 
in their proper relations. Angle views can be had 
from the high portico of the Sub-Treasury, or 
within the vestibule of the Mills Building. But 



THE OLD TOWN 77 

directly in front, in Broad Street, one is simply 
crushed and sees nothing. This great general 
fault of all the buildings in lower New York 
gives one a feeling of suffocation and surfeit; and 
things fine and impressive in themselves lose im- 
portance and seem often in very bad taste, like 
fingers loaded to the joints with massive rings, 
which impress one merely with their intrinsic 
worth and tell nothing of their individual beauty. 

The pediment is admirable in its flowing, cumu- 
lative lines, its effective grouping, and interesting 
contrasts of light and shade. It is strong and 
simple in design, with none of the superflous de- 
tails which encumber most pediments. Its story 
is expressed by the central figure, " Integrity," 
the grave impersonation of business honour, sur- 
rounded by the usual allegorical groups. The 
weather has played amusing tricks with the marble, 
already veined and spotted with grey, adding to 
its undoubted picturesqueness. Though the pedi- 
ment was the design of Ward, the execution is by 
Paul Wayland Bartlett, who has recently com- 
pleted the pediment for the House Wing of the 
United States Capitol. 

A bronze tablet, erected by the Sons of the 
Revolution at the corner of Broad and Beaver 
Streets, calls attention to the historic site where 



78 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the patriot, Marinus Willett, halted the ammuni- 
tion wagons, guarded by British soldiers, single- 
handed on June 6, 1775, as they were attempting 
to carry arms to Boston. 

We are now upon recognizable historic ground. 
At the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets that 
handsome colonial house on the left in Fraunce's 
Tavern, one of the oldest buildings in the city, 
rich in Revolutionary memories, and intimately 
associated with General Washington, dividing 
honors, in this respect, with St. Paul's Chapel, and 
the Jumel and Van Cortlandt Mansions. 

The shore line of the East River, extended sev- 
eral blocks by the filhng-in process, originally 
came up to the site upon which Fraunce's Tavern 
now stands. The property, once part of the Van 
Cortlandt Manor, was deeded by Colonel Stephen 
Van Cortlandt to his son-in-law, Etienne de Lan- 
cey, a Huguenot nobleman, and an active merchant 
in the city. It was he who built the present house, 
as his residence, in 1719. It takes its name from 
Samuel Fraunce, a West Indian Creole, vulgarly 
known as " Black Sam " — a freeman, who opened 
here the Queen's Head, or Queen Charlotte 
Tavern, named for the consort of George III. 

The Chamber of Commerce was organized here 
in the " Long Room," so called from the long 



THE OLD TOWN 79 

Indian lodges used for tribal meeting; and many 
other interesting things happened here, but none 
so important as its use by General Washington, as 
a temporary headquarters, when the British evac- 
uated New York, at the close of the Revolution. 
Here at noon, on December 4, 1783, the touching 
farewell took place between Washington and his 
forty-four officers; a ceremony so simple and 
affecting finds few parallels in history. 

The return to the city, alone, was a melancholy 
business. The town was in a deplorable condition; 
the wide tract, swept by the fire of 1776, still lay 
in blackened ruins, and no effort to rebuild had 
been made except where mere wooden shelters had 
been put up by the soldiers, and desolation pre- 
vailed. 

Fraunce's Tavern is now owned by the Society 
of the Sons of the Revolution, who restored the 
building, taking formal possession on December 4, 
1907. The present appearance is believed to be 
practically the same as during the Revolutionary 
period, the utmost care and pains having been 
taken by the architect of the restoration, William 
H. Mersereau, not only to preserve every brick 
and beam of the original structure, but to match 
what was missing by bricks brought from contem- 
porary buildings in Maryland, or imported from 



80 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Holland. The first floor is still used as a restau- 
rant. On the second floor is the famous Long 
Room, containing portraits of Frederick Samuel 
Tallmadge and John Austin Stevens; while the 
third floor is devoted to the purposes of a museum 
of Revolutionary relics. 

Edwin Austin Abbey has pictured the historic 
Bowling Green in what is said to be his first deco- 
ration, the famous picture, which hangs over the 
bar, in the Hotel Imperial. Done, of course, from 
imagination, aided by much authentic data, the 
picture has all the charm and accuracy of the 
work of this famous American painter. 

It is a long panel, dating well back to the early 
eighties, when Abbey was better known as illus- 
trator than painter. In the picture, he has, as 
always, been very particular as to his facts. A 
game of bowls is in progress on the green ; a group 
of several men in sporting costumes of the period, 
are playing, while another keeps score. These 
men are very possibly Colonel Philipse, John 
Roosevelt, and John Chambers, to whom " The 
Plaine " was leased, in 1733, for eleven years, at 
a nominal rental of " one peppercorn a year "; to 
be maintained by them as a bowling green, fenced 
in, and laid out with pretty walks for themselves 
and other citizens. When the lease expired the 



THE OLD TOWN 81 

price for the privilege was raised to twenty shill- 
ings per annum. 

Behind the green to the right, presumably on 
Broadway, stand Dutch brick houses with their 
broken gables, and to the left, south of the park, 
the fort, with soldiers drilling in front, and a wind- 
mill. It is spring, to judge from the delicate 
colour of the grass and the touch of high green 
foliage, just breaking upon the trees. A woman 
and child, dressed picturesquely, according to the 
prevailing mode of the period, make a centre of 
interest in the picture as they watch the game 
of bowls. 

Bowling Green, once the heart of the Dutch 
colony, now marks, roughly speaking, the half- 
way spot in the length of Greater New York. In 
the old days it was the scene of stirring events. 
The Stamp Act Riot centred here, in 1765, when 
Governor Colden was burned in effigy on the 
green; and later the equestrian statue of George 
III, the first piece of public statuary on the 
island, was set up for a brief space in this place. 

Old records tell of its arrival, together with the 
marble statue of William Pitt, ordered by the 
patriots, on the Brittannia, in June, 1770, and of 
its erection " with great ceremony " on August 
16, of the same year. It was of lead, richly gilt. 



82 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

and has gone down to history as the work of 
Joseph Wilton, a well-known English sculptor 
of the epoch; and in the old engraving of the 
subject it is represented as a classic king seated 
on a rearing charger, preserving its equilibrium 
by perfect balance, after the fashion of the 
Andrew Jackson before the White House. 

More authentic evidence would seem to prove 
that in a general way it resembled the Marcus 
Aurelius, of the Capitoline Hill, from which it 
was doubtless imitated. It is recorded that Wilton 
made a replica of this statue for London, and one 
fancies that this was none other than what the 
author of " Nollekins and his Times " describes as 
" that miserable specimen of leaden figure taste, 
the equestrian statue of King George III, lately 
standing in the centre of Berkeley Square." This 
he tells us was executed under the direction of Mr. 
Wilton, on his premises, in Queen Anne Street 
East, and that " it was modelled by a French 
artist of the name of Beaupre, recommended to 
Wilton by Pigalle, as an excellent carver of 
flowers." 

It had a short life and a gay one, standing less 
than six years, for it was dragged down by a 
patriotic mob, after the reading of the Declaration 
of Independence, July 9, 1776, and, to do the thing 



THE OLD TOWN 83 

thoroughly, melted into bullets of agression against 
the same king it had been designed to honor. The 
fractures in the posts of the iron fence surrounding 
the little park still bear witness to the fury of 
this mob, for they broke off the balls to cast into 
the same vindictive melting pot. 

A tablet at No. 1 Broadway commemorates the 
occasion, and the New York Historical Society 
preserves a collection of interesting relics, includ- 
ing four or five fragments of the statue, picked 
up on the farm of Peter S. Coley, at Wilton, Con- 
necticut, and the pedestal, which served in the 
interim as a grave-stone to Major John Smith 
of the Royal Highland Regiment. This pedestal 
shows the three holes left by the imprint, so to 
speak, of the horse's hoofs — thus proving that he 
was not a rearing animal, but that he stood on 
three legs, in conventional statue style. 

The whole history of the statue is fraught with 
romantic incident. The journal of Captain John 
Montressor, chief engineer of the British Army, 
published by the New York Historical Society, 
in 1881, contains the following illuminating entry: 
" My hearing that the Rebels had cut the King's 
head off the Equestrian Statue (in the centre of 
the Ellipps near the fort) at New York, which 
represented George III in the figure of Marcus 



84 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Aurelius; and that they had cut the nose off, dipt 
the laurels that were wreathed round his head, and 
drove a musket bullet part of the way through 
his head, and otherwise disfigured it, and that it 
was carried to Moore's tavern, adjoining Ft. 
Washington, on New York Island, in order to be 
fixed on a spike on the Truck of that flagstaff, as 
soon as it could be got ready, I immediately sent 
Corby thro' the Rebel Camp in the beginning 
of September, 1776, to Cox (John Cock) who kept 
the tavern at King's Bridge, to steal it from thence, 
and to bury it, which was effected, and it was dug 
up on our arrival, and I rewarded the men and 
sent the head by the Lady Gage to Lord Town- 
shend in order to convince them at home of the 
infamous disposition of the ungrateful people of 
this distressed country." 

The tradition in Wilton, where the fragments 
owned by the Historical Society were found, in 
1871, is that the ox-cart carrying the broken 
statue passed through Wilton on its way to Litch- 
field, and that the saddle and tail were thrown 
away there, perhaps to lighten the load, or more 
probably because they were not of pure lead and 
unsuitable for making bullets. Most of the statue 
seems to have reached its destination, and a very 
interesting book, pubhshed by Caroline Clifford 



THE OLD TOWN 85 

Newton, called " Once Upon a Time in Connecti- 
cut," describes the operation of running the bullets 
by the women and girls of the town and a ten-year- 
old boy, directed by an old general. The ladle 
used in pouring the lead into the moulds is in the 
Litchfield Historical Museum, and amongst Gov- 
ernor Walcott's papers is a memorandum stating 
that 42,088 cartridges were made from the remains 
of the monument and that " His Majesty's statue 
was returned to His Majesty's troops with the 
compliments of the men of Connecticut." 

There is preserved in the Historical Society of 
New York a sketch of the Bowling Green statue, 
compiled from contemporary data, by Charles M. 
Lefferts. It shows the monarch wearing the 
Roman toga, for sculpture was then under the 
influence of the classic revival, and it was unheard- 
of to dress a subject in his ordinary clothes. 
Nearby are the fragments. 

This room in the Historical Society always 
suggests one of my earliest childhood memories. 
My sister and I had a passion for paper dolls 
which we used to cut from fashion magazines and 
clothe with garments made from the coloured fly 
leaves of my father's choicest books. He had, in 
particular, a stack of pamphlets describing a steam 
engine of his invention, and covered with a glorious 



86 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

paper, with velvet finish, in strong cobalt blue. 
Extensive wardrobes for our dolls were gleaned 
from this treasure trove, our tracks being cleverly 
concealed, for an indefinite period, by the simple 
device of beginning our im'oads from the bottom 
of the pile, and using only the under sides of 
the covers. 

Our activities were such that these dolls used 
to pile up on us beyond our ability to house and 
care for them; and my sister, who, even in those 
days, combined with a fertile imagination and a 
strong streak of romanticism, a remarkable sense 
of order that led to unheard-of sacrifices of pos- 
sessions in her periodical " riddings out," conceived 
the idea of holding wholesale " cremations " of 
these dolls, as over-population required it. She 
was as powerful and autocratic in her authority 
as Herod, when he ordered the slaughter of the 
innocents, and no reserves were allowed. She was 
as callous as Nero, when he watched the burning 
of Rome; suffering the loss of mine and her own 
with equal stoicism, and glorying in the sight with 
an eclecticism that brooked no appeal, carrying 
my feeble regrets and hankerings as straws before 
the wind. 

The funeral pyre, once lighted, was allowed to 
burn itself out; and, after the extinction of the 



THE OLD TOWN 87 

flames, it was our morbid pleasure to rake over 
the ashes and identify such portions of anatomy 
as had escaped total destruction. These we pasted 
into a mortuary book, kept for the purpose, and 
meticulously labelled, each according to its history 
— " Remains of Eva Livingston," " Arm of Flor- 
ence Raymond," etc. 

The " remains " of George III, as well as those 
of Peter Stuyvesant's Pear Tree, all carefully 
varnished and presented by a descendant of the 
governor, strike me as just as humorous, and, if 
I may say so, just as silly as this enfantillage of 
my extreme youth; but it is rather delicious to 
find august dignitaries at the same game. 

There is also preserved in the same room of the 
Society the fragment, sans head and arms, of the 
contemporary marble statue of William Pitt, also 
in classic draperies, erected by the colonists, in 
gratitude for Chatham's influence in the repeal 
of the hated Stamp Act. This statue stood in 
Wall Street until it was overthrown and mutilated 
by the British soldiers, in revenge for the outrage 
committed on the George III, soon after their 
occupancy of New York, at the outset of the 
Revolution. 

The Green assumed its present oval form about 
1797. The seated figure of Colonel Abraham de 



88 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Peyster now decorating with, as Taft says, " much 
presence," the grassy spot, is considered one of 
the two best works of George E. Bissell, an 
American sculptor. 

Bissell was for many years a stone carver, and 
entered the field of sculpture late in life, so that 
while he is contemporary in point of years with 
many of the earlier sculptors of this country {he 
was born in 1839), his work belongs with that of 
a later generation. This statue of de Peyster 
brought him into prominence in a pleasant way, 
for in the autumn of 1902 a committee of local 
sculptors, requested by a New York journal to 
designate the six finest examples of monumental 
sculpture in the city, chose Bissell's figure as one 
of them. 

It was said that his Chancellor Watts would 
have been chosen except that it stood in Trinity 
churchyard, and was not a public monument. 
Certainly his portrait statues gain greatly over 
most that the city has to show in a live quality of 
personal interest. Even in such a case as that 
of the de Peyster, an early mayor of New York, 
who died as far back as 1728, so that the portrait 
must be largely drawn from imagination, Bissell 
makes him live, revealing him as interesting 
as his vivid fancy pictures him to have been. 




"AFRICA," BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 

ENTRANCE UNITED STATES CUSTOM HOUSE (PAGE QI ) 



'ENGLAND, BY CHARLES GRAFLY 
ATTIC UNITED STATES CUSTOM 
HOUSE (page 91) 




THE OLD TOWN 89 

The rarity of such a performance is not to be 
depreciated. 

An elaborate inscription details de Peyster's 
many civic services duly inscribed on the pedestal, 
which also records the interesting fact that the 
portrait was erected by John Watts de Peyster, 
of the seventh generation, in direct descent, and 
the sixth born in the first ward of the City of 
New York. 

The Custom House, which, like the old fort, 
whose site it occupies, fronts upon Bowling Green, 
is the design of one of New York's ablest archi- 
tects, Cass Gilbert. A fine building in itself and 
built upon historic ground, it is rich in sculpture 
without and painting within. 

A tablet in the Collector's Room records the 
history of the site. We know that here was 
erected, in 1626, under Governor Minuit, Fort 
Amsterdam, succeeding the original stockade or 
traders' fort of earliest times. Within the fort 
was the director general's house and the Church of 
St. Nicholas, or the Churcli-in-the-Fort, erected in 
1642, and the mother of the Collegiate Dutch 
Church in New York. 

After the demolition of the fort in 1790, the 
so-called Government House, intended as the 
presidential residence of the United States capital, 



90 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

was built upon this ground. This political mis- 
sion it never fulfilled, as New York remained the 
capital for only a year, and the house was not 
ready for occupancy till too late. It was, how- 
ever, the official residence of Governor Clinton and 
Governor Jay, and later was used as the Custom 
House, until burned in the year 1815. 

The present building, erected 1902-07, is planned 
in the style of modern French architecture. Large 
granite columns, crowned with composite capi- 
tals that extend around the four sides of the 
building, make it impressive, even in the crowded 
environment of lower Broadway. In this respect, 
however, it has immense advantage, over most of 
the buildings, in the protection of the little park 
upon which it fronts, while the Battery insures 
the open space to the water, on its western 
exposure. 

In the design of the building an effort was made 
to have it representative of American art as well 
as American commerce, and commissions were 
given to eleven of our best sculptors, for the fig- 
ures which adorn the fa9ade. Of this the most 
satisfactory are the four groups, symbolizing the 
four continenI;s, which, on pedestals advanced from 
the building, flank the entrance. These are by 
Daniel Chester French. In their solidity and 



THE OLD TOWN 91 

repose, they recall, a little, the seated figures of 
the French provinces, which surround the Place 
de la Concorde in Paris. The figure of Africa 
is particularly expressive of the mighty traditions 
of that continent as well as its immense reserve 
power. The woman sleeps easily between the two, 
making no effort to profit by the glory of the past 
nor to develop the possibilities of the future. 

The twelve heroic figures, representing the sea- 
faring powers ancient and modern, which have 
influenced the commerce of the globe, carry out 
the lines of the twelve columns that support the 
attic on the main front. These figures stand forth 
rather flamboyantly from the wall behind them, 
without much sense of belonging to the building. 
Beginning on the left the subjects are Greece and 
Rome, done by F. E. Elwell ; Phoenicia, by F. M. 
Ruckstuhl; Genoa, by Augustus Lukeman; Venice 
and Spain, by F. M. L. Tonetti; Holland and 
Portugal, by Louis Saint Gaudens; Denmark, by 
Johannes Gelert; Germany, by Albert Jaegers; 
and France and England, by Charles Grafly. 

It is a motley company thus assembled on the 
attic story, for sculptural unity has been sacrificed 
to historic fact, and each figure seems to insist 
upon its individuality to the detriment of the en- 
semble. Some sculptors have chosen to represent 



92 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the country allotted to them by famous personages 
in the history of those countries; others by the 
commonplace symbolic figure; and still another 
by a Greek goddess. All are encumbered by 
accessories which identify the country without 
stirring the imagination of the spectator 
more than that of the sculptor was agitated in 
his rather stupid acceptance of the first symbol 
at hand. 

In front of the seventh story, over this row of 
figures is a cartouche by Karl Bitter, displaying 
the shield of the United States, supported by two 
female figures, and surmounted by the American 
eagle with outstretched wings. The cartouche 
over the main entrance is by Andrew O'Connor. 

The four sides are richly embellished with 
motives suggested by the world-wide commerce 
of the United States, of which seventy-five per 
cent is said to enter through the port of New 
York. The head of Mercury, ancient god of com- 
merce, is repeated in the capitals of the columns; 
and, cut in the granite lintel of each window, 
carved heads, representing the eight types of race, 
are repeated alternately. 

Paintings of seventeenth century ports, by 
Elmer E. Garnsey, make the Collector's Room in 
the Custom House one of the finest rooms in 




■'XEW AMSTKKDA.M IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
DECORATION IN THE COLLECTOR'S ROOM, LNlTEl) STATES 
CUSTOM HOUSE. BY ELMER E. GARNSEV (PAGE <)3 ) 



"FRANCE,'' BY CHARLES GRAFLY 

ATTIC UNITED STATES CUSTOM HOUSI- 

( PAGE 91) 




THE OLD TOWN 98 

New York. Mr. Garnsey did also the mural 
painting in the entrance hall of the building. 

The ten decorative panels in the Collector's 
Reception Room represent the ports of Amster- 
dam, Cura9ao, Fort Orange, New Amsterdam, 
La Rochelle, London, Port Royal, Plymouth, 
Cadiz, and Genoa. 

This period Mr. Garnsey selected because of 
its picturesque possibilities; and these ports be- 
cause of their relation to the discovery, settlement, 
and commerce of the Dutch and English colonies 
in the new world. The views show the ports as 
they were in 1674, the last year in which the Dutch 
flag floated over Fort Amsterdam, whose walls 
enclosed the site of the Custom House. 

The painting of New Amsterdam is particularly 
interesting in its accuracy, and from it one can 
learn much about old New York. The picture 
reverses the viewpoint of Abbey's decoration of 
Bowling Green, where the port was seen from 
shore. In this case the spectator is supposed to 
be upon the water, looking at the island from the 
East River. It is amusing to identify the fort, as 
it appeared after its sod walls and palisades had 
been replaced by stone. From the rocky point 
outside the walls of the fort, friends of departing 
voyagers had their last view of the disappearing 



94 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

sails beyond the Narrows. The name of Schreyers 
Hoeh, or " Weepers' Point," bestowed upon this 
spot, recalled to the exiles Schreyers Toern, the 
Weepers' Tower of old Amsterdam. 

On the river shore stands Stuyvesant's house, 
" White Hall." This shore was at first protected 
by wooden piles and sheathing, and later by stone. 
From the shore were built out various extensions 
and bulkheads to form havens for river craft. 
These havens became gradually filled with waste 
and dredgings which caused new extensions to be 
made, until the three blocks at present lying be- 
tween Pearl Street and the river were all filled 
in and added to Manhattan Island. The picture 
shows the Heere Gracht that followed the course 
of the present Broad Street, and emptied into the 
river near the site of Fraunce's Tavern. 

Fronting on the water, now Pearl Street, 
between the Fort and the Heere Gracht were ware- 
houses and shops, of which the largest was the 
Company's warehouse. Under English rule it 
became the Custom House, until it was pulled 
down in 1750. The site is now numbered 33 Pearl 
Street. The buildings of the town, standing in 
compact order north as well as south of the Heere 
Gracht, were mostly of brick, and were nearly 
all devoted in some measure to mercantile pur- 



THE OLD TOWN 95 

poses. Near the right-hand end of the picture the 
building with the cupola is the Stadt Huys, or 
City Hall. Here the director and the council of 
the colonies long held court; and when, in 1670, 
the English governor, Francis Lovelace, built the 
new inn adjoining it on the west, he had a con- 
necting door opened in the wall between his 
hostelry and the court-room to facilitate hospi- 
tahty. 

In the foreground appear two large merchant 
ships, just arrived from Holland. The one at 
the left carries the banner of Amsterdam at her 
stern, and the flag of the Dutch West India Com- 
pany at her mainmast head. The other flies the 
ensign of the States-General and the Company's 
flag. A government yacht is moored alongside 
the breakwater at the right, and beyond lie Hud- 
son River sloops and small craft. 

When the Dutch first sent colonists to settle 
New Amsterdam, others were sent by the West 
India Company further up the river discovered 
and described by Henry Hudson; and these built 
houses and a fort, which they called Fort Orange 
in honor of Maurice, Prince of Orange, on the 
site of the future city of Albany. 

Garnsey makes Fort Orange the subject of a 
second mural painting, showing the town, sur- 



96 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

rounded by a palisade, strengthened by block 
houses, and with gates opening on the principal 
streets. At the intersection of Handlers Street 
(now Broadway) and Yonkers (now State) 
Street stood the Dutch church, the steep roof of 
which appears above the nearest block house. 
From the church, Yonkers Street mounts the hill 
to the site of the present capitol, where the Eng- 
lish built Fort Frederick soon after their final 
occupation. In the foreground are shown the 
sloops which carried the commerce and passengers 
of the time. No contemporary picture of Fort 
Orange exists, so far as is known, and the artist's 
painting is a painstaking " restoration," studied 
from old maps and records, showing also the 
characteristic Hudson River sloops of the period 
which carried New York's commerce up and down 
the North River. Each of the other panels, eight 
large and two small ones, is treated with the same 
fidelity to place and period. The colour scheme of 
the paintings is warm and rich, making a hand- 
some room, full of sunshine and vigorous coloiu*. 

The Custom House occupies the whole of the 
block bounded by Bowling Green, State, Bridge, 
and Whitehall Streets. From its windows is an 
extensive view of the bay, seen across the Battery. 

This charming bit of park seems oddly accidental 



THE OLD TOWN 97 

and pastoral in so mercantile an environment, 
having been left pretty much as a neglected field, 
with no formal improvements since the day when 
Governor Fletcher thought it wise to fortify the 
island along the sea wall, in anticipation of a pos- 
sible coming of the French fleet, as a move in the 
warfare then waged between France and England. 
The battery of guns set up outside the fort gave 
the locality its present name, by which it has been 
known since 1673. 

The park was a favourite promenade and play- 
ground during colonial days, when Bowling Green 
was the centre of fashion, and shipping came up 
almost to the doors of the city's aristocracy. The 
north side of the Battery was then one of the most 
chic of residential streets, while the fashionable 
quarter extended into Greenwich Street, where 
fine old houses may still be found in a state of 
pathetic dilapidation. Old people are still living 
in New York who remember playing in Battery 
Park, when it was the logical breathing-space for 
city children. 

Of all the fine residences which faced the park, 
but one remains, and that, situated at the extreme 
point of the mass of buildings which form the end 
of the island, is designated as No. 7 State Street. 
The house may be distinguished at a glance for 



98 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

its obvious age, expressed by the style of its pil- 
lared front, as well as by its peculiar shape. It 
stands at the sharp turn in State Street where it 
rounds the curve of the island's base, the house 
being built on the apex of the angle. 

It is known to have been built during the last 
part of the eighteenth century, by James Watson, 
who sold it, in 1805, to Moses Rogers, a promi- 
nent merchant and man of affairs in those days, 
and well connected as connections went in New 
York. He was an active member of the Society 
for the Manumission of Slaves, an officer of the 
New York Hospital, treasurer of the City Dis- 
pensary, a vestryman of Trinity Church, and a 
member of the Society for the Relief of Distressed 
Prisoners. This latter society was an important 
one in the early history of the city ; its purpose was 
to ameliorate the unhappy condition of prisoners 
housed in the gaol, the demolished building known 
to us as the Hall of Records. The state, it is 
said, allowed them only bread and water and they 
depended largely for sustenance upon benevolent 
people. 

Until 1830 this house remained in the family, 
and was the scene of many notable entertainments. 
During the Civil War it was taken by the govern- 
ment for military uses and afterwards became the 



THE OLD TOWN 99 

office of the Pilot Commissioners. It is now 
devoted to the use of the Catholic Mission of Our 
Lady of the Rosary. 

The elevated roads and subway have done what 
they can to destroy the simple beauty of this bit 
of green, but it is still thoroughly enjoyed by the 
leism-e class of the quarter, and commands a superb 
view of the harbour with all that it contains of 
animation and life. One of the things that absorb 
the attention of loungers in the park is the flash 
of the sunset gun, followed by the kindling of the 
Liberty torch, and the blink of the revolving light 
on Robbins' Reef, off Staten Island. 

At the time that the United States declared 
war against Great Britain, in 1812, a number of 
forts and defences were built on the islands in the 
bay to defend the approach by ocean, while others 
were erected in Hell Gate to protect the entrance 
by Long Island Sound. Amongst others was 
built Fort Clinton, upon a little island close to 
the Battery, and this we know to-day as Castle 
Garden. The fort was built on a mole and 
connected with the city by a bridge. The em- 
brasures for the thirty heavy guns may still be 
seen. 

It achieved its immortal history as the portal 
through which millions of immigrants entered the 



100 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

United States, but before that time it had been 
a place of public amusement and entertainment. 
Lafayette was received here, on his visit to the 
city in 1824, by an enthusiastic gathering of six 
thousand persons; later, in 1835, Morse, the in- 
ventor of the telegraph, made a pubhc demonstra- 
tion of the value of his discovery, by means of a 
wire coiled about the interior of the Garden; and 
here, in 1850, Jenny Lind, the Swedish singer, 
made her American debut under the management 
of P. T. Barnum. The tickets were sold by auc- 
tion, and so curious was New York over the whole 
affair, that three thousand persons paid the admis- 
sion fee of 25 cents to see the sale. The first ticket 
brought $225, and one thousand tickets were sold 
on the first day, realizing $10,141. The doors 
were opened at five o'clock, and 5,000 persons 
attended the concert, of which the gross receipts 
amounted to nearly $18,000. Of Jenny Lind's 
half of the receipts of the first two concerts she 
handsomely devoted $10,000 to the public chari- 
ties of New York. 

Castle Garden was the immigrant bureau until 
1890, and six years later was opened as an aqua- 
rium, so that it has never known a moment's 
privacy in. the whole of its chequered career. As 
one of the fine aquariums of the world, it attracts 



THE OLD TOWN 101 

multitudes of people daily, by reason of its superb 
exhibits of fish of the most brilliant species. 

Besides Verrazzano, John Ericsson has been 
appropriately chosen as worthy of a statue on 
Battery Park, in his character of inventor of the 
Monitor, which defeated the Confederate ironclad 
Merrimac, at Hampton Roads, on March 9, 1862, 
and thereby saved New York from bombardment. 
The statue is by J. Scott Hartley, a well-known 
local sculptor, recently deceased, and by him pre- 
sented to the city, in 1903. The rather charming 
inscription reads: " The City of New York erects 
this Statue to the Memory of a Citizen whose 
Genius Contributed to the Greatness of the 
Republic and the Progress of the World." 



VI 
TRINITY CHURCH 

Trinity Church takes the full value of that 
noble preeminence which once made it the pride 
of the town and the feature of Broadway, on a 
bright autumn afternoon. Especially on a Sat- 
urday or a Sunday afternoon, when there is no 
business to detract from the cold gloom of Wall 
Street, and the loiterer may have lower Broadway 
to himself, does the charming edifice put its case 
most strongly. 

It particularly delights me to make the loop 
aroimd Pearl Street from the lower end, fancying 
myself on the old river road, back to Wall, and 
to surprise myself with this admirable vista of 
the church centred in the western end of that 
thoroughfare, for Wall is one of the few streets 
of prosaic New York that boasts a vista. Coming 
along the shaded " cingle," crushed by the weight 
of new masonry, it is amusing to take one's stand 
against the heavy walls of the building opposite 

102 



TRINITY CHURCH 103 

the Sub-Treasury, and absorb the unusual ele- 
ments of a paradoxical picture. 

Over by the corner of the Sub-Treasury a 
pretty woman, bareheaded and at ease, even on 
more tremendous days, sits casually selling papers. 
A knitted garment of the genus " tea-cosey," 
fitted tightly to the figure, protects her against 
the sharpening air of a waning season, and she 
wears that secure look of a woman that has 
become part and parcel of men's vast enterprises, 
sure that the friendly police and habitues of the 
district will see her through any misadventures 
of so thronged a thoroughfare ; and herself lending 
a warm and homelike air to the most frenzied 
corner in New York. 

Trinity Church nestles in comfortably beyond 
the Bankers' Trust Building, which frames the 
view to the right, its dark, Gothic mass, black, 
deep, and substantial, never losing weight and 
dignity in this rough environment. One of the 
sycamores in the churchyard, leaning towards the 
church, lends its delicate tracery to the poetry of 
the picture, and at the chosen season shows small 
leaves, intensely green and fresh in the general 
brownness, with the afternoon sun shining through 
them. 

The gradual extinction of Trinity by the en- 



104 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

croaching skyscraper is a theme that has anunated 
every writer interested in the city's sky-line, since 
the days when the spire of Trinity Church domi- 
nated the profile view of the island from the 
Jersey side. Henry James, speaking for a whole 
passing generation of New Yorkers, of the period 
when people were still " born in New York," 
deplores with admirable cynicism and much deli- 
cious imagery, the actual shrunken presence of 
that laudable architectural effort. But things 
have grown immensely in the ten years that have 
elapsed since Mr. James recorded his impressions 
of a city revisited. The " jagged city " is still 
jagged, yet some of the teeth in the colossal hair- 
comb, to which he so wonderfully compares her, 
have been filled in; and this filling in, while it still 
further eclipses any claims to visibility to which 
Trinity might hopelessly cling, especially in the 
sky-line, has brought about something quite other 
than was originally intended. 

Where she formerly dominated, she now sits 
enshrined ; and the beauty of that shrine is perhaps 
more precious, more subtle, because of its very sur- 
prise and rarity in a world of commerce. Not the 
elevated trains thundering past the rear of the 
fine old graveyard; not the throng of money- 
makers pressing ceaselessly before the door of 




MAIN PORTAL TRINITY CHURCH 
KARL BITTER, SCULPTOR (PAGE IO7) 



TRINITY CHURCH 105 

the edifice; nor the trivial office girls, with diffi- 
culty restrained from eating lunches on the very 
tombs of ancestral notables, can detract from the 
dignity of the church and its setting. Through all 
it maintains its ecclesiastic calm and beauty. Bells 
ring the hours. Within the gateway all is peace — 
old-world peace. The trees of the garden are 
wonderful against the sunlit background of the 
Gothic office building that walls it in on the north. 
Like some old cathedral of newer Italy it holds 
its own with the increased pace set by progress, 
and opens its doors for such fragments of atten- 
tion as a busy world can spare for a submission 
to spiritual influences. Such churches become 
tremendous factors in the daily life of citizens, 
the one ameliorating circumstance, perhaps, in 
the humdrum of business, to whose enormous gains 
the passing throng is but as so much mechanism. 

The rectors, wardens, and vestry of Trinity 
Church have influenced the nomenclature of the 
thoroughfares hereabout, not only in such names 
as Rector, Church, and Vestry Streets, but in 
Vesey, Barclay, and Beach Streets, named after 
old-time ministers of the parish. Rector Street 
received its name from the Reverend William 
Vesey, who once lived in this street, and Vesey 
Street was called for him. More than a score of 



106 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

thoroughfares bear the names of prominent mem- 
bers of the corporation; among them Murray, 
Chambers, Warren, Reade, Jay, Harrison, North, 
Moore, Laight, Desbrosses, Vandam, Watts, 
Charlton, King, Hamersley, Clarkson, LeRoy, 
Morton, and Barrow Streets. 

The church is the third of the name that has 
stood on this site since 1697. The first was burned 
in the great fire of 1776, which destroyed five hun- 
dred buildings. Almost the entire western part 
of the city was at this time consumed, St. Paul's 
Chapel being the only building of importance 
saved. The second Trinity was condemned as 
unsafe and pulled down to make way for the 
present edifice, erected between 1839 and 1846, 
so that the church, which in modern New York 
seems so ancient, has spanned but the average 
life of man — threescore years and ten. 

R. N. Upjohn was the architect of Trinity, 
and his work is considered a fine example of the 
simplified Gothic style. The brown sandstone of 
which it is composed is characteristic of the city, 
and was much used for dwellings of about this 
period and later. The artistic features of the 
church came at a much later date, and were largely 
the gift of the Astor family. The bronze doors 
to the three entrances were given by William 



TRINITY CHURCH 107 

Waldorf Astor, in memory of his father, John 
Jacob Astor ; while the handsome altar and reredos 
are memorials to William B. Astor, erected by 
his sons, John Jacob and William. 

The three pairs of bronze doors are by Karl 
Bitter, Massey Rhind, and Charles H. Niehaus; 
three foreign-born sculptors, identified for many 
years with the art life of New York. The Bitter 
doors are those in the tower, opening upon Broad- 
way, and are generally closed, except during serv- 
ice, so that they can be well seen from without 
and in their entirety. They represent the sculp- 
tor's first work in this country, to which he had 
come from Austria, his birthplace, in 1889, in the 
twenty-second year of his age. Bitter had here 
neither friends nor relatives, and he won the com- 
petition, into which he entered as an unknown 
sculptor during the first year of his stay in Amer- 
ica, entirely on his merits. 

The Bitter doors follow the general type of the 
Ghiberti gates to the Baptistry, in Florence; the 
space being divided into panels, and surrounded 
by small upright figures alternated with heads, 
and recHning figures separated by emblems. The 
subjects of the panels are biblical. These doors 
express Bitter's accomplished use of decorative 
sculpture ; the modelling is charming in its smooth 



108 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

fluency, and shows the thoroughness of the sculp- 
tor's fundamental groundwork. Of the many 
doors founded on the Ghiberti tradition none ex- 
ceed these in graceful adaptation. They gained 
for Bitter instant recognition, when they were 
shown, and brought him to the favourable notice 
of Richard M. Hunt, the most celebrated local 
architect of his time ; and it was through Hunt that 
Bitter became associated with the Columbian 
Exposition, which gave him his larger opportunity 
and fixed his status with us as sculptor. For 
Hunt he made the elaborate sculptural decoration 
for the Administration Building, and at the re- 
quest of another influential architect, George B. 
Post, decorated the Liberal Arts Building for the 
Chicago Fair. 

The north door, by Massey Rhind, is also pan- 
elled with Bible subjects; and the south door Mr. 
Niehaus has treated with local historical matter. 
Both are dated 1892. The statues of the four 
evangelists were placed in the tower by Wilham 
FitzHugh Whitehouse and his wife, in 1901. 

The interior is of impressive proportions, its 
dim, religious light violated, however, by the lurid 
chancel windows of conventional design, contem- 
porary with the building. Rumour attributes the 
design of the end chancel window to Richard 





JOHN WATTS, RY CICORGF. EDWJX BISJ 
TRINITY CHURCHYARD (pAGE II3) 



BUST OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, SIGNED 
"J. JARDELLA, FECIT, FOR J. TRAQUAIR, 
PHILADELPHIA," OVER MEMORIAL TABLET, 
sexton's OFFICE, TRINITY CHURCH (P.IIO) 




RECUMBENT STATUE OF MOK(;AX DIX, KY ISIDORE KONTi 
ALL SAINTS' CHAPEL, TRINITY CHURCH (PAGE IO9) 



TRINITY CHURCH 109 

Upjohn, the architect, and the story persists that 
it was executed by an Englishman, named Sharp, 
and baked on the spot, in a shop erected behind 
the chancel. There is a legend, too, that the pul- 
pit is made from wood taken from the frigate 
Constitution. 

All Saints' Chapel, designed by Thomas Nash, 
architect, was added to the church in 1912, by the 
vestry, as a memorial to INIorgan Dix, for forty- 
six years rector of the parish. In itself extremely 
sympathetic, harmonious, and charming, it con- 
tains the recumbent figure, portrait of the rector 
in death, by Isidore Konti, sculptor. This figure, 
in marble, occupies a little niche on the north wall 
of the chapel, and follows very closely the tradi- 
tion of such sculptured tombs as preserved in the 
Gothic cathedrals of Europe. The memorial is 
beautifully modelled and fits the general scheme 
of its setting with rare good taste. 

The rather perfunctory eflSgy of Bishop Onder- 
donck, between the chapel and the passageway 
north of the chancel, is much earlier. Beyond are 
some interesting stones, wreckage from the old 
buildings. In the sacristy are many fine memo- 
rials to departed parishioners, of which a handsome 
one, in the reserved style of the period, was erected 
to the memory of Alexander Hamilton by the New 



110 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

York State Society of Cincinnati. It bears a noble 
inscription, beautifully cut and embellished, and is 
surmounted by a bust of the statesman. 

In the vestry, beyond, is the large marble relief 
over the tomb of John Henry Hobart, rector of 
Trinity and bishop of the State of New York, 
interesting as the work of Thomas Ball, an early 
American sculptor, whose work, generally of a 
dignified and monumental type, is best exempli- 
fied in the equestrian statue of Washington, in the 
Boston Public Gardens. 

On high days and holidays the old Queen Anne 
communion service is brought to light, — seven 
massive pieces of silver presented by the Queen to 
the church over two hundred years ago, stamped 
with the royal arms and hall-marked 1709. Still 
older is a baptismal bason, of the time of William 
and Mary, bearing the 1684 hall-mark and the 
royal arms. This is only part of the church's 
treasure which includes chalices and flacons of 
royal gift and a chalice studded with the jewels 
of Augusta McVickar Egleston, to whose memory 
and that of her husband a tablet is erected in the 
sexton's office. 

If the church is comparatively modern, the 
graveyard goes back to Queen Anne's day, and 
was granted by the city for a burial ground in 



TRINITY CHURCH 111 

1703. Fees for burial were limited to 3s. 6d. 
for adults, and Is. 6d. for children under twelve 
years. The oldest graves, however, antedate the 
erection of the first church edifice, and existed 
within the enclosure before the official grant. 
These are those of two children, Richard and 
Anne Churcher: quaint headstones record their 
deaths, in 1681 and 1691. When these graves 
were dug. New York was a little city of barely 
three thousand souls, recently come into possession 
of the English. Members of the established church 
held service in a little chapel in the fort, to which 
Queen Anne had presented the silver communion 
set. 

To browse amongst the tombstones of this sa- 
cred little garden spot is to revive many memories 
of colonial history. A moss-covered slab on the 
north side, worn by the weather, covers the grave 
of Benjamin Faneuil, the father of Peter Faneuil, 
who built Faneuil Hall, Boston. This family was 
driven out of France by the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, under which Protestants were 
tolerated in that kingdom. Benjamin Faneuil 
came to this country with a large colony of Hu- 
guenots, and numbers of these refugees and their 
descendants lie buried here. The first burial vault 
at the south entrance is that of " D. Contant," a 



112 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

victim of the edict which enriched America with 
the best blood of France. This persecution 
brought also the Bayards, Jays, Boudinots, and 
Tillons, and peopled South Carolina with such 
revolutionary leaders as Marion and Laurens; it 
led also to the erection of Bowdoin College, where 
Longfellow and Hawthorne studied, and the 
Faneuil Hall. 

The vault of the Earl of Stirling lies on the 
western slope, close by the fence. This was built 
in 1738, and is the ancestral vault of the Living- 
stons, Jays, Stuyvesants, and Rutherfords, and 
contains the remains of James Alexander and his 
descendants by his son, WilKam, Earl of Stirling. 
The third Earl of Stirling figured honourably in 
the Revolutionary War, while his two daughters, 
Lady Mary Watts and Lady Kitty Duer, were 
prominent at the court of Washington. 

There is a charming monument to Alexander 
Hamilton, erected by the Corporation of Trinity 
Church in testimony of their respect for this " pa- 
triot of incorruptible integrity, the soldier of ap- 
proved valour, the statesman of consummate wis- 
dom, whose talents and virtues will be admired 
by grateful posterity long after this marble shall 
have mouldered into dust." At the foot of the 
monument a slab records the interment of " Ehza, 



TRINITY CHURCH 113 

daughter of Philip Schuyler," Hamilton's widow, 
who died at Washington and is buried here. Next 
to Hamilton is a memorial to Robert Fulton, with 
a portrait medallion by Weinert; and nearby Bis- 
sell's imposing portrait statue of John Watts, the 
last royal recorder of the City of New York, 
erected by his grandson, John Watts de Peyster, 
the same who presented the statue of Abraham de 
Peyster to the city. John Watts, a contemporary 
record tells us, married his cousin, Jane de Lancey, 
and " they were considered the handsomest couple 
of their day." Here too lies Sir Henry Moore, 
the only native American ever appointed governor 
of the province. He is interred in the chancel. 
Five generations of Bleekers sleep in the vault of 
Anthony Lispenard Bleeker, a slab marking the 
spot at the southwest corner of the building. The 
last body was interred in this vault in 1884. 

As late as 1729 there was no street west of 
Broadway, and the lots on the west side of that 
thoroughfare descended to the beach. In the ele- 
vation of the churchyard above Trinity Place, a 
trace of the original bluffs along the North River 
may be recognized. 

Trinity Church from its income supports the 
parent church and eight chapels, contributes reg- 
ularly to twenty-four congregations, maintains 



114 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

schools, a dispensary, a hospital, and a long list of 
charities. Its tenements, its ground rents, and in- 
vestments make it the richest church society in 
America. Most of the so-called " Church Farm," 
granted by Queen Anne, is still Trinity property, 
except the portions ceded to the city, by the cor- 
poration, for streets, and for St. John's Park. 

Trinity was burned to the ground the night of 
the British occupancy of New York; but St. 
Paul's, the first of Trinity's chapels, not only 
escaped destruction from the flames which scorched 
it, but was kept open for services without inter- 
ruption, and patriot and tory preached from its 
pulpits according to the fortunes of war. It was 
here, and not in the parent church, that Washing- 
ton worshipped as Commander-in-Chief, when he 
occupied the city before the Battle of Long Island ; 
while Lord Howe, the British commander. Sir 
Guy Carleton, Major Andre, Lord Cornwalhs, 
and the midshipman, later William IV of England, 
and other royalist soldiers were regular attendants. 

After the war the governor of the state had his 
pew here and the legislature and common council 
had seats allotted to them; while Washington's 
old square pew, reserved for him when New York 
became the capital of the federal government, is 
kept untouched. Washington sat under the na- 



TRINITY CHURCH 115 

tional arms on the left-hand aisle, and on the op- 
posite side of the church, under the arms of the 
State of New York, Governor George Clinton had 
his sittings. 

St. Paul's is the only church edifice in the city 
that has been preserved from the pre-Revolution- 
ary period. When its corner-stone was laid, on 
May 14, 1764, at what is now the corner of Broad- 
way and Fulton Street, that district was a grow- 
ing wheat field, and members of Trinity parish 
questioned the wisdom of establishing a chapel " so 
far out of town." Its " groves and orchards " 
stretched down to the North River, then at Green- 
wich Street. The architect, INIcBean, was influ- 
enced by the Sir Christopher Wren type, then 
greatly in vogue in London, where he had stud- 
ied, and the interior closely follows that of St. 
Martin's-in-the-Fields, in Trafalgar Square. 

The original pulpit is fine in character and deco- 
ration; its canopy is surmounted by the crest of 
the Prince of Wales — a crown and three ostrich 
plumes — the only emblems of royalty that escaped 
destruction at the hands of the patriots, when they 
regained possession of the city, in 1783. The 
chancel rail and some of the chairs, as well as 
much of the woodwork, is of this same period, and 
very charming and simple; one might easily fancy 



116 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

one's self in some parish church of rural England. 
The chancel and walls bear many beautifully de- 
signed tablets of the Revolutionary period and 
later, erected to the memory of old families of the 
congregation. 

While this church was still one of the most im- 
portant in town, in about the year 1818, John and 
William Frazee opened their marble shop in 
Greenwich Street, and many of the handsome, 
carved tablets and tombstones of St. Paul's and 
other churches may be traced to their skill. The 
Church of the Ascension contains one in perfect 
taste, in black and white marble, to the memory 
of Jacobi Wallis Eastburn; signed " W. and J. 
Frazee." But St. Paul's owns a real curiosity in 
what Dunlap* describes as the " first marble por- 
trait from a native hand — a bust of John Wells, 
Esq., a prominent lawyer in New York, chiselled 
after death from profiles. ..." This was John 
Frazee's first bust, made in 1824 or 1825, without 
instruction. Considering the disadvantages of 
working from mere silhouettes, without experience, 
the success of the bust is remarkable. For it 
and its odd accompaniment of incidental objects 
with which the base is loaded, as well as the hand- 

* " History of the Arts of Design." William Dunlap. New 
York, 1834. 




WILSON MEMDRIAL CROSS. THOMAS NASH, ARCHITECT 
TRINITY CHURCHYARD (PACE III) 



REVERSE OF 

WILSON MEMORIAL CROSS 

(page III) 




TRINITY CHURCH 117 

some lettering, Frazee received $1,000. Recog- 
nized as a sculptor of parts he was later commis- 
sioned, by congress, to make portraits of John Jay 
and other prominent characters. Dunlap further 
records: — " It grieves me that I cannot relate the 
anecdotes of Frazee respecting the sittings of 
these eminent men. Webster, at the request of 
the sculptor, delivered a congressional speech while 
Frazee modeled." 

To realize the true distinction of St. Paul's, one 
should take the trouble to enter the yard, not from 
Broadway, for that is the back way, but from 
either Fulton or Vesey Streets, and walk back to 
the end of the garden, before turning to look at 
the edifice. Thus only can one do justice to its 
charming architecture, and appreciate the inten- 
tion of the designer. An intelligent custodian has 
ranged benches across the end of the churchyard 
where one may take in the picture at leisure. The 
church, with its portico abutting suddenly on 
Broadway, and its spire, apparently on the wrong 
end, seems abrupt and awkward until we know 
that it was built to face the river, and that it stood 
back from a fine sloping lawn, extending to the 
water's edge. In the exigencies of city develop- 
ment the rear of St. Paul's has become virtually 
its front, and one is without some precaution, 



118 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

first impressed by the statue of St. Paul in the 
pediment, the monument to Major-General Rich- 
ard Montgomery against the chancel window, and 
the two shafts to the memory of Irish patriots 
of distinction. The monument to General Mont- 
gomery was erected by congress, who entrusted 
Franklin with its purchase, and it was he who 
secured the services of Caffieri, a sculptor, in 
Paris, whose name is signed to the work. 
Montgomery commanded the expedition against 
Canada, in 1775, and led the assault upon Quebec, 
where he met his death. He was given a soldier's 
burial by the English and nearly fifty years later 
Canada surrendered his remains to the United 
States. 

Trinity Church was not rebuilt until 1790, but 
lay in black ruins during the British occupation, 
but the yard was in use, and figured as the public 
burying ground of Revolutionary times. There, 
most of the private soldiers, sailors, prisoners of 
war, strangers, and the poor were interred. The 
Martyrs' Monument stands in memory of the 
tragic case of the prisoners who died by thousands 
from cruelty and starvation, we are told, and were 
cast into trenches in this cemetery. 

St. Paul's, on the other hand, was the military 
chapel of the British commander, and its grounds 



TRINITY CHURCH 119 

were reserved for the interment of English offi- 
cers as well as citizens of wealth and standing. 
Many tombstones antedate the Revolution, but 
the parish records, prior to 1777, kept at Trinity, 
were all destroyed in the great fire, so that the 
tombstones are the only source of information. 
These bear mute testimony to the transitional state 
of this parish in early days, for friends and foes lie 
side by side. There are memorials to the founders 
of New York families — Ogden, Somerindyke, 
Nesbitt, Rhinelander, Thorne, Cornell, Van Am- 
ridge, Gunning, Bogert, Onderdonck, Treadwell, 
Cutler, Waldo, and others. Christopher Collis, 
who built New York's first waterworks and the 
Erie Canal, is buried here. He used steam to 
pump water from Collect Pond into his reservoir 
on Broadway, and, it is said, was the first to sug- 
gest that the same force might be applied to ferry- 
boats with safety and economy. 

St. Paul's once held a large and fashionable 
congregation, drawn from the surrounding streets 
when Park Place was a residential centre. The 
first substantial sidewalks were laid on the west 
side of Broadway, between Vesey and Murray 
Streets, about 1787. New York was far behind 
Philadelphia in this respect, and Franklin is 
quoted as remarking that a " New Yorker could 



120 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

be known by his gait in shuffling over a fine pave- 
ment like a parrot upon a mahogany table." 

The old Astor House, built on the Astor estate, 
just north of St. Paul's, about 1836, and now re- 
placed by an office building which retains the 
name, was a famous hotel for more than fifty 
years, and its register would show the signatures 
of many noted men, for " every one " used to stop 
there. Washington Irving lived once at No. 16 
Broadway with his friend, Henry Brevoort, at the 
house of a Mrs. Ryckman. This site is now cov- 
ered by the Seaboard National Bank, facing Bowl- 
ing Green, and inside the entrance is a fine clock 
set in a large sculptured panel by Karl Bitter. 

A tablet at No. 113 Broadway marks the site 
of the former residence of Governor James de 
Lancey, the son of Etienne de Lancey, the 
builder of Fraunce's Tavern. Washington's in- 
augural ball was held in this house, and Thames 
Street becomes interesting, and its narrowness ac- 
counted for, when we recognize it as the carriage 
drive from the de Lancey house to the stables. 

What the gravestones and monuments of Trin- 
ity and St. Paul's have not told of the public 
men of old New York the portrait gallery of the 
Chamber of Commerce will reveal, bringing the 
list down to date. This fine collection of portraits 




LL saints' chapel THROUGH THE NORTH PORCH OF TRINITY CHURCH 
HOMAS NASH, ARCHITECT (PAGE IO9) 



TRINITY CHURCH 121 

of New York merchants, numbering now over two 
hundred canvases, is housed in that sumptuous 
French Renaissance building, crowded into nar- 
row Liberty Street, east of Broadway, the design 
of James B. Baker. 

The florid front and one open side, loaded with 
heavy ornament, suggest a condensation of the 
architectual features of the modern part of the 
Louvre — massive forms applied with richness to 
the vast extent of the French palace, set within a 
large formal garden designed to enhance its beauty 
and impressiveness ; but absurdly disproportionate 
to the possibilities of a small New York lot, hedged 
in by competitive stone structures in the narrowest 
of thoroughfares. By flattening one's self against 
the opposite houses and throwing the head back 
at a dangerous angle, one gets an impression of a 
busy fa9ade topped by a low Mansard roof, worn 
smugly, like a flat-crowned derby on a dressy fat 
man. 

Engaged, fluted columns support the attic story, 
and between these columns are groups of statuary 
by Philip Martiny and Daniel Chester French. 
The central figures of these groups, Alexander 
Hamilton, John Jay, and De Witt Chnton, repre- 
sentatives of another time, seem to feel their posi- 
tion keenly, and to seek escape from a world of 



122 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

frenzied finance, whose outward and visible signs 
are beyond their endurance as modest colonials. 
Even less do the figures of Mercury and his com- 
panion by Karl Bitter seem to " belong " to the 
pediment which surmounts the ineffective entrance, 
their feet dangling insecurely above the little door- 
way at the southwest corner of the building. This 
entrance leads to a great stairway up which the 
members pass grandly once a month to meetings 
held in the Chamber, a large room on the second 
floor, possibly inspired by the Galerie d'Apollon 
of the Louvre, but lacking the elegant proportion 
of that famous apartment. This room contains 
the greater part of the portrait collection. 

The Chamber of Commerce was organized by 
twenty-four merchants of New York, in 1768, and 
incorporated by George III two years later, 
through the offices of Lieutenant-Governor Cad- 
wallader Colden, whose excellent portrait, a full- 
length presentment by Matthew Pratt, painted for 
the Chamber, in 1772, was the nucleus of the pres- 
ent collection. In 1792 a companion portrait of 
Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treas- 
ury of the United States, also full-length and fife- 
size, was painted by John Trumbull for the mer- 
chants of New York, admirers of that great states- 
man, and by them presented to the Chamber of 



TRINITY CHURCH 123 

Commerce. These two portraits, the treasures of 
the collection, have passed through many vicissi- 
tudes during the years that preceded the erection 
of a permanent building for the organization. The 
gallery possesses an unusually fine Stuart portrait 
of Washington ; two portraits of De Witt Clinton, 
one by Trumbull and the other a very fine Inman ; 
several quaintly interesting portraits by Asher B. 
Durand; a Charles Willson Peale; and a Rem- 
brandt Peale of Robert Ainslee. Daniel Hunting- 
ton contributed largely to the collection, making 
several original portraits as well as many copies 
of older existing portraits, done to fill in gaps in 
the series of important members. 

But it is as a gallery of New York's money- 
makers that the collection holds one, and the 
descendants of the makers of New York have 
been interested to supply ancestral portraits, so 
that in a number of cases one may compare the 
first, second, and third generations of local finan- 
ciers and study the different types produced by 
this absorbing gamble for the city's wealth. One 
interesting reflection comes to mind. There are 
great portraits of great men — portraits of Ham- 
ilton, Washington, Clinton, Colden, and others 
that would live on their merits as paintings, with- 
out regard to the sitter's personality; and there 



124 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

are portraits of rich men that have no interest 
other than the personahty of the sitter. The first 
John Jacob Astor was an exception to a very 
general rule that men of wealth have not been 
painted by great artists. He is represented in 
the Chamber by a copy of an interesting portrait 
by Gilbert Stuart. 

Amongst other souvenirs preserved by the 
organization are two handsome silver tureens given 
by the merchants of Pearl Street to De Witt 
Clinton, and a Severes vase presented by the 
Republic of France to the Chamber of Commerce, 
in recognition of the part taken by the Chamber 
in the reception and entertainment of the French 
delegates to the inaugm-ation of the Statue of 
Liberty. 



VII 
THE CITY HALL 

With the growth of the city under Enghsh 
occupation, Bowling Green gave way to that 
larger open spot, now City Hall Park, as more 
favourably situated for public purposes. This 
locality was included in the common lands vested 
in the city under the terms of the Dongan Charter, 
in 1686. It was first known as the Vlacte, or flat, 
later as the Common, and often was designated 
simply as the " Fields." During the trials and 
vicissitudes of the people under the English gov- 
ernors, and throughout all the excitement that pre- 
ceded the actual outbreak of the Revolution, the 
Fields was the logical meeting-place of the popu- 
lace for weal or for woe. 

Here, early in the morning of November 1, 1765, 
was held the first public demonstration opposing 
the hated Stamp Act; and it was here that the 
people gathered again during the stormy month 
preceding its repeal. Meanwhile James de Lan- 
cey's house on Broadway, next to Trinity Church, 

125 



126 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

had become the famous Burns' Coffee House, 
where the merchants of the city met and signed 
an agreement to buy no goods from England, so 
long as the English king compelled them to use 
stamps. The exaltation following the accomplish- 
ment of this drastic action carried the patriots 
through a quiet day, when shops were closed and 
business suspended, gained momentum at night- 
fall, and led to the burning of Lieutenant-Gover- 
nor Cadwallader Colden in effigy, in his own coach 
of state, on Bowling Green; while Vauxhall, the 
residence of Major James of the British Army, 
was ravaged, and its contents made into a bonfire 
around which the mob howled and danced, because 
of this gentleman's unfortunate remark that the 
stamps ought to be crammed down the throats of 
the people with the point of a sword. 

For the repeal of the Stamp Act the gratitude 
of the community went to its champion, William 
Pitt, Earl of Chatham, to whose memory the citi- 
zens erected the marble statue at the site now 
marked by the intersection of Wall and Wilham 
Streets. Though this was torn down and muti- 
lated, as already described, a street was named 
for Pitt, and Chatham Square still bears witness 
that the city fathers desired to perpetuate his 
memory. The street called Chatham was that part 




CORRIDOR SCRKKN, CITY HALL 




THE CITY HALL 127 

of Park Row which extends beyond City Hall 
Park and connects with Chatham Square. His- 
torians have deplored the stupidity of the change 
of name, not only because it is unmindful of 
Pitt's immense service in our colonial history, but 
because it deprives Park Row of its exoiusively 
descriptive significance, as a street extending along 
the side of a park. 

There is a story of a man who bought himself 
a new hat in honour of his wife's birthday. King 
George III must have felt something of the same 
complexity of emotions as did this wife, when the 
Sons of Liberty erected a Liberty Pole on the 
Common in New York, to celebrate his birthday, 
after the repeal of the Stamp Act. However, he 
turned the tables on them by sending a statue of 
himself to immortalize the occasion — the same that 
was erected in Bowling Green. 

The Liberty Pole was a bone of contention 
between the British soldiers and the Sons of 
Liberty until torn down and chopped to pieces 
by the former, one night in January, 1770, thus 
precipitating the Battle of Golden Hill, the first 
battle of the Revolution. The battlefield has been 
identified as an old ill-conditioned courtyard back 
of the Golden Hill Inn, but two minutes' walk east 
from St. Paul's in Broadway. The whole of 



128 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Golden Hill may be circled by following Maiden 
Lane from Broadway to Pearl Street; Pearl 
Street to Fulton Street; Fulton Street back to 
Broadway; and thence to Maiden Lane. This 
exercise is recommended only to persons whose 
imagination is hardy enough to persist in the face 
of most blighting facts. Antiquarians have dealt 
lovingly with it, and it seems almost a pity to 
destroy illusions, acquired during cosey evening 
readings of the most enthusiastic writers on the 
subject of old New York, whereby Golden Hill 
may be reconstructed in all its pristine quaintness. 
Gold Street, a few feet east of the battle ground, 
commemorates the name; and where it intersects 
Piatt Street stands the famous Jack Knife house, 
once a square tavern, through which was ruthlessly 
cut Piatt Street, leaving this curious remnant of 
architecture, shaped like a giant knife-blade, and of 
which one end is so narrow that the rooms branch 
from the stairway like shelves. 

Maiden Lane winds just as it did around the 
base of Golden Hill when it was a tiny stream 
between steep green banks. Where it emptied 
into the river, at Pearl Street, stood a blacksmith 
shop which gave the name, S7nifs V'lei, or Smith's 
Valley, to the locality. This was the starting-point 
of a little settlement, and the old " Fly Market," 



THE CITY HALL 129 

a corruption, of course, of the original Dutch 
name, stood here. In early days the washing 
was done in the river, and the story goes that this 
pathway was called Maiden Lane, from the young 
laundresses who followed it in pursuit of their 
picturesque calling. 

An old building, made of tiny bricks brought 
over from Holland, standing, for the moment, 
the last in a line of general demolition in William 
Street, north of John Street, and considerably 
over one hundred years old, was the Golden Hill 
Inn, which is still doing business around the corner 
on John Street. Half a dozen doors from Broad- 
way, on John Street, stood the John Street Thea- 
tre, called the Theatre Royal by the British offi- 
cers who held the city at the beginning of 1777, 
and gave entertainments in this house. Washing- 
ton attended it during the first year of his presi- 
dency, when he lived in the Franklin Square 
house, and there is record of his having seen a 
performance of " The School for Scandal," fol- 
lowed by a comic opera, in this theatre in May, 
1789, a few days after his inauguration. John 
Henry played Sir Peter Teazle, of which he was 
the original in this country, and the leading lady 
was Mrs. Morris. This actress was tall and hand- 
some, and so chary of being seen by daylight that 



130 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

" she had a gate made from her lodgings in Maiden 
Lane to enable her to run across John Street and 
into the theatre, without walking around through 
Broadway and exposing herself to the gaze of 
the beaux." 

Washington's visits to the theatre were always 
very ceremonious. His box was " elegantly fitted 
up and bore the arms of the United States." At 
the entrance soldiers were posted and others were 
generally placed in the gallery. " Mr. Wignell, in 
a full dress of black, with hair elaborately pow- 
dered, and holding two wax candles in silver 
candlesticks, received the President and conducted 
him and his party to their seats." 

The first Nassau Street Theatre was on the 
east side of the thoroughfare from which it took 
its name, between John Street and Maiden Lane. 
Kean and Murray appeared here in March, 1750. 
The room in which performances were given T. 
Allston Brown, in his " History of the New York 
Stage," describes as in a wooden building, belong- 
ing to the estate of Rip Van Dam. This was a 
two-storied house with high gables. The stage 
was raised five feet from the floor, and scenes, 
curtains, and wings were all carried by the man- 
agers in their property trunks. Six wax tapers 
lit the stage, and suspended from the ceiling was 



THE CITY HALL 181 

a barrel hoop, through which half a dozen nails 
had been driven, in lieu of sconces, for the candles, 
served as chandelier. The orchestra consisted of 
a flute, a horn, and a drum. 

The times were colourful. On the occasion of 
a benefit to Mr. Jago in this theatre, the adver- 
tisement stated: "Mr. Jago humbly begs that 
all ladies and gentlemen will be so kind as to 
favour him with their company, as he never had 
a benefit before, and is just come out of prison/' 
Upon another occasion Mrs. Davis gave a benefit, 
in order to " buy off her time." It was the prac- 
tice of masters of vessels to bring passengers to 
New York upon condition that they should be 
sold as servants, immediately upon arrival, to any 
person who would pay their passage money. They 
were bound for a definite period of time, and were 
called " redemptors." Mrs. Davis was one of 
these. 

A tablet on the corner of the City Hall marks 
the spot where was read the address that pro- 
claimed the birth of a free and independent nation. 
A horseman brought the news of the adoption of 
the Declaration of Independence from Philadel- 
phia, the soldiers of the new Union were ordered 
to the Common and there, before a great con- 
course of people and the commander-in-chief, he 



132 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

made the tremendous announcement. The wild 
enthusiasm of the crowd as it rushed away found 
expression in the tearing down of the portrait of 
George III from the City Hall in Wall Street, 
and the destruction of his leaden statue in Bowling 
Green. 

With so much historic background it seems par- 
ticularly fortunate that so fine a building as the 
City Hall should mark so memorable a spot in 
the development of the nation. It has been ranked 
among the three or four finest examples of colo- 
nial architecture extant. " When New York was 
so small that its business and its dwelling parts 
together did not extend much above Chambers 
Street," says Richard Grant White, in writing of 
this edifice, " its citizens erected the handsomest 
public building that to this day (1911) is to be 
found within its new immensity, and one of the 
finest to be found in the country." 

The City Hall presides with a distinct air of 
elegance over the intensely active centre of affairs 
in which, after over one hundred years of utility, 
it still surprisingly finds itself. Projected in the 
last year of the eighteenth century, the corner-stone 
was laid in 1803, and the building first occupied 
in 1811. It has the great advantage of having 
been conceived by a cultivated French architect 




OTl'MiA AND STAIRWAY, CITY HAI 



THE PORTICO OF CITY HALL, LOOKING WEST 




THE CITY HALL 133 

and carried out by a conscientious Scot; while a 
second Frenchman made the exquisite finish in 
such details as the carving of capitals and orna- 
ment. 

It is curious that the authorship of a building 
so important, as well as so extremely beautiful, 
should ever have been a matter of doubt, but it 
was not until the publication of the first volume 
of Mr. Phelps- Stokes' monumental work on the 
" Iconography of Manhattan Island," last year, 
(1916) that the controversy as to the authorship 
of the prize drawings for the building has been 
settled beyond apparent further question; and 
proper credit given to the French architect, Joseph 
F. Mangin, McComb's senior partner, for the 
design of a building essentially and distinctly 
French. 

When, in 1800, a committee was appointed to 
consider the erection of a new city hall, its first 
step towards the achievement of that enterprise 
was to offer a premium of $350 for the best de- 
sign submitted. Mangin and McComb won the 
prize over twenty-five competitors, and three of 
the prize drawings, showing the front and rear 
elevations and the cross section, are preserved in 
a collection of one hundred and five drawings 
relating to City Hall left by John McComb, and 



134 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

inherited by his granddaughter, Mrs. Edward S. 
Wilde, from whom they passed to the New York 
Historical Society, in 1898, together with Mc- 
Comb's diary and his record book. The restora- 
tion and decoration of the Governor's Room in 
the City Hall, in 1907, brought to light the exist- 
ence of these valuable drawings which was not 
discovered until after the work was undertaken. 
They proved of invaluable assistance. 

After the design was accepted, the name of 
Joseph Mangin disappears from further connec- 
tion with the building. No explanation has been 
offered of the rupture that must have taken place 
between the two architects, but it seems highly 
probable that they fell out over the committee's 
suggestion that the accepted plan should be modi- 
fied, and the size of the building reduced to save 
expense. This must have been most distasteful 
to the artist of the firm, and Mangin probably 
refused all compromise that would aifect the 
beauty and purity of his plan. It would seem in 
perfect character with the artistic temperament 
to have preferred to chuck the whole commission 
rather than suffer alterations prejudicial to the 
purity of the design. An examination of the three 
existing prize drawings shows an erasure over 
McComb's signature where Mangin's name, as 



THE CITY HALL 135 

senior architect, belongs, which shows to what 
an extent the feeling between the two had gone. 
McComb submitted the modified plan in accord- 
ance with the committee's ideas, and bided his time 
to persuade the members to return to the original, 
which they did, in most respects, restoring the 
original width and voting for restoration of the 
original depth, unfortunately too late to make the 
change. Meanwhile the old committee was dis- 
charged and a new one formed, and this new com- 
mittee appointed John McComb architect of the 
building with complete control over every depart- 
ment, at a salary of $6 per day for each and every 
day that he was engaged at the new hall. 

Mangin was the architect of the first St. 
Patrick's Cathedral and of the State Prison, of 
which the plan and elevation are preserved in the 
Schuyler Collection of the New York Public 
Library. The firm of Mangin Brothers, archi- 
tects, 68 Chambers Street, appears in the city 
directory for several years at the close of the 
eighteenth century. " A careful study and com- 
parison of the designs and draughtsmanship of 
these two architects," says Mr. Phelps- Stokes, 
" and a close inspection of the City Hall plans, 
leaves little doubt that the competitive drawings 
for the City Hall embodied the ideas, as well as 



136 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the draughtsmanship, of Mangin rather than of 
McComb. Their presentation is distinctly French, 
the shadows are cast in the conventional French 
' graded wash ' manner, which was never used by 
McComb, and the drawing itself is superior to any 
drawing known to have been made by McComb. 
A comparison of the City Hall competitive draw- 
ings, both plan and elevation, with the sheet of 
drawings containing the original competitive de- 
signs for St. John's Chapel, which Mr. McComb 
was wiUing to sign ' John McComb Jun. Del.' will 
settle beyond a doubt the respective positions of 
Mangin and McComb, both as designers and 
draughtsmen. To an architect it appears self- 
evident that he who made the one (St. John's) 
could never have made the other (the City Hall) ." 
The- importance of McComb's actual work, in 
collaboration with his partner in the preparation 
of the designs, and as architect of record in charge 
during the entire period of construction, is not to 
be belittled. He developed the working drawings, 
and proved himself a conscientious and thorough 
contractor, holding to his purpose through many 
vicissitudes in the progress of the building, fre- 
quently advancing necessary funds from his pri- 
vate purse to meet pressing demands and to carry 
on the work, while appropriations were pending. 



THE CITY HALL 137 

He was vested with every authority by the com- 
mon council, which had utmost confidence in his 
business abihty, sound judgment, and integrity. 
When first conceived it was the intention to carry 
out the design in brownstone, and McComb was 
empowered to purchase a quarry of this product in 
Newark; and when, later, the committee yielded 
to their architect's eloquent appeal for better 
material in the construction of a building that was 
" intended to endure for ages," he resold the 
Newark quarry, and secured marble for the front 
and two end views from West Stockbridge, Mas- 
sachusetts. Great difficulty was experienced in 
transporting the marble over the Berkshire Hills 
by teams of horses and oxen, and McComb himself 
supervised the building of roads and the strength- 
ening of bridges. He used to make the trip to 
West Stockbridge on horseback to attend to the 
work at the quarries and expedite the transporta- 
tion, and he kept a record, in what he termed his 
" Marble Book," of the material as it was received, 
each block being accurately described; and this 
shows that 35,271 cubic feet of marble were used, 
costing a trifle over $35,000. 

The work was subject to frequent delay on 
account of the refusal of the aldermen to grant 
the necessary appropriations, and the little econo- 



138 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

mies practised argue as eloquently for the archi- 
tect's Scotch thrift as for the stinginess of the civil 
authorities in providing for the beauty and dura- 
bility of their municipal building. The base and 
the north side are of the brownstone, McComb's 
concession to the aldermanic point of view, for 
which he found no doubt comfort in the thought 
that the land to the north of City Hall would prob- 
ably remain farms and marshes. The north side, 
however, is painted white to simulate uniformity 
of material, — an architectural insincerity that 
should be effaced. 

The carvers were not appointed till early in 
1805, when John Lemaire was engaged as chief 
carver at $4 a day. The excellence of his work- 
manship and artistic knowledge is noticed in the 
exquisite carving of capitals and ornaments, work 
which McComb proudly claimed was not surpassed 
by any in the United States and seldom better 
executed in Europe, and which " for proportion 
and neatness of workmanship will serve as models 
for future carvers," a prediction that has been 
realized. The design is pure and no pains or 
research have been spared to make it so. The 
capitals of the first and second orders are marvels 
of execution. Lemaire's name is cut in the top of 
the blocking course over the front attic story, as 




HE mayor's reception- room, city hall (page 142) 



'the marquis de lafayette 
by samuel finley breese morse 
mayor's reception room, city hall 

(PAGE 142) 




THE CITY HALL 139 

well as the names of the building committee, archi- 
tect, and master mechanic. 

The Fields, at the time of the proposed erection 
of the City Hall, was already a sort of civic centre 
of New York, and the new edifice was intended 
to form one of a group of municipal buildings 
including the Alms House on its north, the Gaol 
on the northeast, and the Bridewell to the north- 
west. That the position of City Hall was selected 
with due regard for its relation to these buildings 
is shown by the plan of the Fields, submitted with 
the design of the building. This provided for a 
site raised above the surrounding land, and the 
hall was to be so placed, in its relation to the 
Bridewell and the Gaol, that its cupola should 
line with that on the Alms House, and the " mugs " 
in front range with Murray Street. The portico 
originally commanded an unbroken view down 
Broadway, with St. Paul's, the wooden spire of 
Trinity, and the cupola of Grace Church lending 
color to the picture; while, as planned, the vista 
from the Battery included Broadway widening 
into its Conmion, crowned by this graceful symbol 
of the city government. 

The building was never completed according to 
the accepted design. The front still lacks the 
sculptural mass intended to cap the central bay. 



140 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

and for which the existing sketch shows a group 
representing the seal of New York supported by 
seated figures of the sailor and Indian. Classic 
figures were designed to stand along the roof, and 
in the execution were replaced by urns, and these, 
it is thought, were the " mugs " referred to in the 
prospectus. In the original drawing a clock occu- 
pies the space given to the middle window of the 
attic story; this was never executed, but instead, 
in 1828, the cupola was violated by the addition 
of an intermediate section to provide for the four 
dials of the clock, as it now appears. In 1858 
the cupola was entirely destroyed and the low 
dome over the great stairway seriously damaged 
by fireworks set off to celebrate the successful 
laying of the first Atlantic telegraph cable. When 
these were rebuilt little effort was made to restore 
more than the general appearance of the originals. 
The City Hall has survived many threatened 
dangers in its brief span of life, and for a time 
its destruction seemed inevitable in the general 
demolition that has become the accepted practice 
in New York. Neglected and shabby it remained 
for years, and would have gone but for the united 
efforts of loyal citizens whose hue and cry were not 
to be disregarded. It took on a veritable new 
lease of life, however, when Mrs. Russell Sage 



THE CITY HALL 141 

munificently financed the restoration of the Gov- 
ernor's Room, that splendid salle on the second 
floor, originally intended for the use of the gov- 
ernor when in the city. This room became in time 
the municipal portrait gallery and a reception 
room for the distinguished guests of the city. 
Lafayette and Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, 
were entertained here; and the bodies of Abraham 
Lincoln and John Howard Payne lay in state in 
this room. 

The restoration and decoration dates from 1907 
and was done by Grosvenor Atterbury and his 
associate, John Almy Tompkins, McComb's orig- 
inal notes being closely followed. The Governor's 
Room is now an exquisite return to its epoch, and 
unique in its harmony of line and proportion. In 
it is fittingly hung the historic collection of con- 
temporary portraits of Washington, Hamilton, 
and the governors from 1777, painted for the city 
by John Trumbull, between 1790 and 1808. Be- 
fore he was twenty Trumbull had become a colonel 
on Washington's staff and done excellent service. 
These portraits represent his most distinguished 
work as a painter; and that of Governor Clinton 
is considered his masterpiece. Rather cold and 
formal in manner, and lacking the vitahty and joy 
of a Stuart portrait, they possess, on the other 



142 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

hand, a fine official reserve and dignity, eminently 
suited to the room in which they hang and to the 
characters they portray. All the portraits in this 
central room are by Trumbull, and all except the 
two over the mantels hang in the original frames 
made for them, by Lemaire, the sculptor who did 
the carving on the City Hall. 

The east and west rooms, opening off the 
Governor's Room, continue the portrait collection 
painted for the city, and contain good examples 
of such early American painters as John Vander- 
lyn, Henry Inman, Charles Wesley Jarvis, and 
others. The most delightful portrait, preserved 
in City Hall, is that of Lafayette, by Samuel 
Finley Breese Morse, painted for the city on the 
occasion of the general's second visit to America, 
in 1824. It hangs over the mantelpiece in the 
Mayor's Reception Room, in company with inter- 
esting portraits of former mayors of the city. This 
great canvas shows Lafayette in the sixty-eighth 
year of his age, a gallant figure, standing vigor- 
ously, dressed modishly, and with a world of char- 
acter and humor in the face. It is a stronger por- 
trait than that painted by Sully, during the same 
visit, which hangs in Independence Hall, Philadel- 
phia, though that too is admirable; and reveals 
Morse, whom we know better as the inventor of 




NATHAN HALE. BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES 
CITY HALL PARK (PAGE I48) 



THE CITY HALL 143 

the telegraph, to have been a remarkably talented 
painter. 

Vanderlyn, Sully, Peale, Jarvis, Waldo, Inman, 
Ingham, and some others competed for the privi- 
lege of painting the distinguished French visitor 
for the city of New York. The choice fell upon 
Morse in his most enthusiastic period, and through 
his voluminous correspondence, edited by his son, 
we have ample record of the progress of the por- 
trait, which was painted under great difficulties. 
Not only were the first sittings interrupted by 
Lafayette's many social duties and many visitors, 
but a more serious break in the work was occa- 
sioned by the death of Morse's wife, which cast 
a gloom over the whole proceeding. 

The sittings were begun in Washington on 
February 9, 1825. " The General is very agree- 
able," wrote Morse to his wife on this date, *' He 
introduced me to his son by saying: ' This is Mr. 
Morse, the painter, the son of the geographer; 
he has come to Washington to take the topography 
of my face.' " The second sitting was interrupted 
by a messenger who brought the news of Mrs. 
Morse's sudden death, upon which Morse sus- 
pended work in order to visit his family at New 
Haven, and the portrait was taken up and finished 
later. 



144 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Morse's own description of the portrait is taken 
from a letter, written by him towards the close of 
his long life. He says: " Lafayette is represented 
at the top of a flight of steps, which he has just 
ascended upon a terrace, the figure coming against 
a glowing sunset sky, indicative of the glory of 
his own evening of life. Upon his right, if I re- 
member, are three pedestals, one of which is vacant 
as if waiting for his bust, while the others are sur- 
mounted by busts of Washington and Franklin— 
the two associated eminent historical characters 
of his own time. In a vase on the other side is a 
flower — the helianthus — with its face towards the 
sun, in allusion to the characteristic stern, uncom- 
promising consistency of Lafayette — a trait of 
character which I then considered, and still con- 
sider, the great prominent trait of that distin- 
guished man." 

Morse lived to be eighty-one years of age. His 
life was almost equally divided by his two domi- 
nant occupations into two equal periods. Up to 
the age of forty-one years he was wholly artist, 
while during the latter half of his life, following 
his epoch-making invention, art was dispossessed 
by a new goddess, and the brilliancy of his scien- 
tific career has obscured the immense importance 
of his artistic output. 



THE CITY HALL 145 

The city began its valuable collection of por- 
traits in 1790, by requesting President Washing- 
ton " to permit Mr. Trumbull to ' take ' his por- 
trait, to be placed in the City Hall as a monument 
to the respect which the inhabitants of this City 
have toward him." In the autumn of 1804, soon 
after the tragedy at Weehawken, the common 
council commissioned Colonel Trumbull to paint 
the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, Trumbull 
had already painted, from life, the excellent por- 
trait of Secretary Hamilton now in the Metro- 
politan Museum, and it is said that, in addition to 
this record of the statesman, he used Cerracchi's 
marble bust, of which the original is now in the 
collections of the New York Public Library. For 
seventy-five years the common council continued 
this policy of securing portraits of distinguished 
men. 

The series of governors' portraits was begun in 
1791, when Colonel Trumbull was commissioned 
to paint Governor George Clinton, and the col- 
lection is complete down to Governor Dix, cover- 
ing a period just short of one hundred years. 
Trumbull's portraits of Duane, Varick, Livings- 
ton, and Willett began the series of mayors of 
New York, which is complete to Mayor Gunther, 
in 1872. One of the latest acquisitions is a por- 



146 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

trait of John McComb, painted by Samuel Waldo, 
about 1820. 

Time has dealt kindly with the City Hall in the 
matter of patine, mellowing the whiteness of its 
marble surfaces to, as Hopkinson Smith has said, 
the complexion of a tea-rose. The comparison 
seems beautifully apt, for this fair flower of archi- 
tectm-e stands indeed like such a rose in a garden 
of rank weeds, none more blighting in its influence 
than the distressing bulk of the General Post 
Office, clapped down in the very face of the 
*' classic thoroughbred," blocking its view and ob- 
truding its blatant personality into the vista that 
formerly gave colour to the ascent of Broadway. 

It is the fate of New York buildings to be old 
before their time, and juvenile as is the City Hall, 
as buildings go, it is the last of the efforts of the 
past century to create for beauty as well as prac- 
ticality. The Gaol was long considered the most 
beautiful building in the city, being patterned 
after the Temple of Diana of Ephesus. When it 
was finished, about 1764, the whipping post, 
stocks, cage, and pillory were brought up from 
Wall Street and were set up in front of it, while 
the gallows, as less constantly in requisition, stood 
screened from the public eye, in the rear. This 
little building, altered beyond recognition, per- 



THE CITY HALL 147 

sisted many years in the guise of the Hall of Rec- 
ords, and was but recently destroyed. The Bride- 
well, or common jail, built in 1775, was demolished 
in 1838, the stones being used to build the old 
Tombs, an interesting and gloomy edifice in the 
Egyptian style, from which it took its lugubrious 
title, all significance of which is lost in the ugly 
modern structure now replacing it on the original 
site. 

This site is topographically important in the 
history of New York. ^Vhen the Dutch examined 
the extent of Governor Minuit's spectacular bar- 
gain, they found, situated on that spot of the 
island where now stands the Tombs, a fresh-water 
pond, known in the English tongue as the Collect, 
a corruption of the Dutch Kalch-hooh, meaning 
lime-shell point, and given to a shell-covered prom- 
ontory above the pond, and later applied to the 
pond itself. The Collect lay in the middle of a 
marshy valley, stretching across the island from 
about the present Roosevelt Slip to the western 
end of Canal Street. Its natural outlet was a 
stream, called the Wreck Brook, flowing from it 
across the swamp to the East River. Before the 
Revolution a drain was dug through the marsh, on 
the line of the present Canal Street, to the North 
River. The ultimate filling in of the Collect 



148 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

was considered the most important improvement 
made in the last decade of the eighteenth centmy. 
This was done by cutting down and casting into 
it the nearby hills, the very great depth of the 
pond, reputed indeed to be bottomless, caused the 
coimnissioners to hesitate before attempting such 
heroic measm-es; and many plans for deahng with 
the Collect were considered before the filling-in 
process was decided upon. 

Historical memories with which the whole of the 
region of City Hall Park is replete have furnished 
themes for sculpture and paintings, to be found 
in numbers ornamenting municipal buildings, 
banks, office buildings, and others in the neigh- 
bourhood, and indeed throughout the city. 

The great fire of September 21, 1776, burned 
up New York from Broadway to the Hudson 
River, as far north as St. Paul's. The next day 
Nathan Hale, a member of Knowlton's Rangers, 
was executed on full confession, some authorities 
still insist, in this little park. 

The statue of Nathan Hale, which stands be- 
fore the City Hall, is an imaginary portrait done 
by Frederick MacMonnies when that sculptor was 
but twenty-eight years of age. The romantic story 
of the patriot spy fired the genius of the sculptor, 
and the work, done in his strongest youthful pe- 




HORACE GREELEY, BV JOHX gUIXCY A 
CITY HALL PARK (pAGE I50) 



THE CITY HALL 149 

riod, has been classed as his greatest. After the 
retreat of the army from Long Island, Washing- 
ton took quarters in Apthorpe JNIansion, overlook- 
ing the Hudson River, miles above the little city 
of New York. 

In answer to the call for a volunteer to go into 
the British hues and learn their plans, Nathan 
Hale presented himself, and disguised, he made 
his way into the enemy's camp. He had fully 
informed himself as to their plans, when, hurry- 
ing back to his commander, he was surprised and 
captured. At his trial he admitted freely what 
he had done, and, asked if he had a last word to 
speak before being hanged, he threw up his head 
proudly and said, " I only regret that I have but 
one life to lose for my country." 

MacMonnies presents him in this supreme mo- 
ment of his life; fired with the exalted emotions 
of youth, his arms pinioned to his sides, his ankles 
fettered, he stands proud but not defiant, with 
tense sincerity and entire lack of pose. The figure 
is intensely hving and vital, beautifully expressive 
of the peculiar individual grace and charm that 
characterize the work of this most talented man. 

In our rambles about New York we shall have 
many opportunities to study MacMonnies, who is 
better represented than most sculptors in the city. 



150 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

He is a native of Brooklyn, where many of his 
most important works are placed, but wherever 
one finds them, whether in Prospect Park, or in 
the pediments of the Bowery Bank, or the span- 
drels of the Washington Arch, there is always this 
feeling for beauty, for nobihty and refinement, so 
eloquently expressed in the youthful statue of 
Nathan Hale. 

The charming, realistic statue of a slovenly old 
man, with a round face, loosely fringed by a white 
beard; seated in a tasselled chair, more comfort- 
able than sculpturesque, is Ward's admirable ren- 
dering of Horace Greeley, the founder of the New 
York Tribune. It belongs against the facade of 
the Tribune Building, from whence it was removed 
only a few months ago to its present detached 
location before the City Court. Thus placed it 
loses half the interest of its problem, which was 
not only to invest an eccentric exterior with sculp- 
tural quality, but to place the figure beneath a 
very deep arch in a thick wall, backed up awk- 
wardly by a huge window. The disposition of the 
figure in a low armchair, leaning forward, hold- 
ing a copy of the paper, but looking out above it 
as if considering its policy, the rounded back with 
advanced head, can only be explained in its rela- 
tion to the setting for which it was designed. The 



THE CITY HALL 151 

low, broad mass, raised upon a high pedestal, 
stood well out of the way of passers-by on the 
sidewalk, with a result as harmonious and agree- 
able as could be expected. The statue as it stands 
is human and uncompromising, one of those frank 
presentments of personalities that made Ward the 
figure he is in the history of American sculpture. 



VIII 

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 

While the little town of New Amsterdam 
struggled to maintain itself under the protection 
of the guns of the fort, the back country of the 
island rapidly filled up with settlers. The poten- 
tiality of the territory for trade and development 
of various profitable kinds, once realized by the 
mother country, the West India Company's next 
concern was to devise means of anchoring the 
colony to the shore. The fort offered security 
and defense against possible invasion, to the origi- 
nal settlement, but there was nothing very allur- 
ing to attract colonists to these parts, and the 
population was transient and unsatisfactory. One 
of the methods of peopling the colony was by the 
patroon system, under which grants of land were 
offered to any man who would emigrate from 
Holland, bringing with him not less than fifty 
persons to make their homes in New Netherland. 
The company reserved the Island of Manhattan 
for itself, but large farms were portioned out in 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 153 

this manner in the surrounding country. The 
" patroon " who imported the colony became lord 
of the manor, with supreme authority over his 
colonists, who operated his farm and contributed 
the products of their labours as rent. 

This system of colonization failed utterly, from 
the Dutch Company's point of view. The pa- 
troons were solely interested in enriching them- 
selves, at the expense of the company, trading in 
furs against the express regulations to the con- 
trary, and in other ways breaking faith with Hol- 
land, whose interests they were supposed to serve. 
Under Kieft's administration the patroons were 
done away with, and free passage was offered by 
the company to any one who promised to cultivate 
the land in the new country. The prospect of 
owning their own land brought many colonists, 
and laid the foundation for the whole of Greater 
New York, as it stands to-day. 

Meanwhile several small villages had sprung 
up upon the island itself, the Boston Post Road 
leading out of the town towards the Bossen 
Bouwerie, Haarlem, and Bloemendaal, and 
passing through the little Bouwerie Village on 
its direct route. 

During Kieft's governorship, six bouweries, or 
farms, were laid out on the eastern portion of the 



154 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

island; it was one of these that Peter Stuyvesant 
purchased as a country seat, in 1651, and here he 
came to live after the surrender of New Amster- 
dam to the English. Four years after Stuyve- 
sant 's purchase of the tract of land, of which the 
existing landmark is old St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, 
on Second Avenue and Tenth Street, the Indians 
came to be considered a menace to outlying set- 
tlers, having, in retahation for certain shameful 
outrages committed against themselves, attacked 
and killed several farmers and their wives. As a 
precautionary measure, settlers were instructed to 
abandon isolated farms and to concentrate in ham- 
lets. This order led to the establishment of the 
Bouwerie Village, in the vicinity of Stuyvesant's 
farm, centring about where is now Cooper Union, 
and to the opening of the Bouwerie Lane con- 
necting the village with the town. This was the 
beginning of the first road which extended the 
length of the island, a road still identified as 
that roofed-in, traffic-laden thoroughfare, rich in 
honourable, shameful, and pathetic history, the 
Bowery. 

Three years later the murder of a prominent 
settler, who had purchased the flats, on which the 
village of Haarlem was afterwards built, led to the 
settling of a hamlet, in that locality, and to the 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 155 

extension of the Bouwerie Lane to the northern 
end of the island. 

Though almost every trace of the original little 
settlement is blotted out, Bouwerie Village still 
possesses a distinct character and flavour of its 
own; and is as diff'erent from other parts of New 
York as it can possibly be. It is rather amusing 
to note how little coordination there is between 
these divisions of the city, separated by uninterest- 
ing wastes of mere streets. 

The Great Bouwerie, constituting Governor 
Stuyvesant's purchase, was a tract of land extend- 
ing two miles along the East River, north of what 
is now Grand Street, and taking in a section of 
the present Bowery and Third Avenue. The vil- 
lage created by the exigencies of troublous times 
soon included a blacksmith's shop, a tavern, and 
a dozen small houses; and in time Peter Stuyve- 
sant built a chapel, in which Hermanns Van Ho- 
boken, the schoolmaster after whom Hoboken is 
named, preached to the members of the governor's 
household and the few residents in the neighbour- 
hood. This chapel Stuyvesant erected, at his own 
expense, prior to 1660; his house stood just north- 
west of the church, and his famous pear tree, 
brought over when he returned from his unpleas- 
ant experience in Holland, to settle upon his 



156 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

American farm, he planted in his garden, where 
it grew and bore fruit for two centuries. A tablet 
on a house at the northeast corner of Thirteenth 
Street and Third Avenue records the circumstance 
of the planting of the tree, " by which," Peter is 
supposed to have said, " my name may be re- 
membered." The City Hall, as well as the His- 
torical Society, preserves a branch of this modest 
memorial as well as a picture of the tree. 

Stuyvesant lived to enjoy his Bouwerie to the 
age of eighty years, and was buried in the grave- 
yard of the old church. When Judith, the widow, 
died, in 1692, she left the chapel, in which the 
old governor had worshipped, to the Dutch Re- 
formed Church, stipulating in the transfer that 
the Stuyvesant vault should always be protected. 
The chapel stood another hundred years, by which 
time, being sadly fallen into decay, a great-grand- 
son of the governor, who had inherited most of 
his ancestor's possessions, induced the vestry of 
Trinity Church to erect a Protestant Episcopal 
church upon the same site, contributing himself 
eight hundred pounds, as well as the lot upon 
which it stands surrounded by a picturesque grave- 
yard. This Petrus Stuyvesant, old Peter's great- 
grandson, was a member of the Trinity Corpora- 
tion, and a man of influence, so that the vestry 




11 I OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, BV JOHN TRUMBULL 
IX THL OOVERNOR's ROOM, CITY HALL (PAGE I41) 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 157 

raised five thousand pounds for the building. The 
corner-stone was laid in April, 1795, and the edi- 
fice completed in 1799. To support the new 
parish. Trinity turned over the income of thirty 
lots of its city property. The pews in the lower 
part of the church were sold at auction on a lease 
for five years at an annual rental ranging from 
thirty to one hundred and forty shillings. Until 
St. Marks, each Episcopal church on Manhattan 
Island had been erected by Trinity as a chapel. 

The body of Peter Stuyvesant lay in a vault by 
the old chapel, and the new edifice was constructed 
to cover that vault, which is now visible from the 
outer walk, so that pilgrims may read the inscrip- 
tion on the stone built into the Eleventh Street 
side of the foundation. The body of Governor 
Henry Sloughter was interred in the next vault. 
The first wardens of the parish were lineal de- 
scendants of Governor Stuyvesant and Governor 
Winthrop; and among the original pewholders 
were Hugh Gaine, one of the earliest and best 
printers of the city, and General Horatio Gates. 
Notable among the wardens and vestrymen were 
Colonel Nicholas Fish, of Revolutionary fame; 
Gideon Lee, once mayor of New York; Jacob 
LoriUard, Clement C. Moore, Hamilton Fish, 
Henry E. Davies, and Henry B. Renwick. The 



158 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

trustees were Petrus Stuyvesant, Francis Bayard 
Winthrop, Gilbert Golden Willett, Mangle Min- 
thorpe, Martin Hoffman, William A. Harden- 
brook, and George Rapelye; the last named, how- 
ever, declined later to serve. 

The churchyard has been used exclusively for 
vault interment, and there are no headstones, — 
merely the simplest of slabs covering the vaults 
and inscribed with the name of the owner. Many 
prominent families used this burying ground, and 
here lie the remains of Peter Goelet, Thomas 
Barclay, Jacob Lorillard, Nicholas Fish, Peter 
Stuyvesant (the grandson). Mayor Philip Hone, 
and Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. A. T. 
Stewart's body was stolen from this cemetery, 
and the quiet stone with its simple inscription 
still marks the spot where he was interred. 

What virtue there is in a crooked street! The 
slant of Stuyvesant Street, upon which St. Marks- 
in-the-Bowery fronts, gives charm and piquancy 
to the whole quarter. The church, by the grace 
of this old relic of Bouwerie Village days, stands 
at variance to the rage for parallelograms that 
affected the Commissioners, who laid out the 
streets of New York. Fortunately St. Marks 
was built before this happened and its presence, 
at an opposing angle to the rectilinear sys- 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 159 

tem, saved the street, so pleasantly named for 
the founder of the ancient settlement. 

St. Marks-in-the-Bowery now finds itself in the 
midst of one of the most picturesque and colour- 
ful parts of the city. Second Avenue, to which 
it presents its garden and an angle view of the 
church, especially agreeable to see as one walks 
up the avenue, having quickly shed the lustre 
of a once famous residence street, has taken on all 
the bustle and activity of a foreign boulevard, with 
terrace cafes and restaurants, liberally patronized 
by foreign residents, and where English is scarcely 
understood. In summer, when Fifth Avenue is 
deserted. Second Avenue alone vies with Broad- 
way in the gaiety indicative of a seething me- 
tropolis. 

The breadth of the street and the many beautiful 
old houses still standing recall the days, well within 
the memory of comparatively young people, when 
Second Avenue succeeded St. John's Park as the 
centre of fashion and elegance. I have before 
me a letter written by a friend whose early recol- 
lections of New York have often entertained me. 
" Our house in Second Avenue," she writes, *' was 
between Eighth and Ninth Streets. On the same 
block were the Winthrops, the Stuyvesants, the 
Campbells, and opposite the Kettletas and other 



160 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

old families, whose names I've forgotten. Second 
Avenue was considered the ' swell ' residence ave- 
nue in those days. Beautiful homes they were, 
set back from the street within green yards— the 
wide avenue lined with trees. Wide, spacious 
houses, with mahogany front doors and silver- 
plated handles. Inside were marble halls, four- 
teen-foot ceilings, all mahogany doors, with silver 
knobs, set in white frames, carved marble mantel- 
pieces, great mirrors, and lustre chandeliers, hung 
with brilliant prisms (every summer enveloped in 
gauze). 

" When I look back it seems as though it must 
have been some other child and not I that was 
part of all this. The cattle were driven, from the 
farms above New York, through Second Avenue 
to the market in the Bowery. Many a time, as a 
child, rolling my hoop on the broad sidewalk, I 
would run into the front yard and shut the gate 
till a drove of steers or sheep passed by — usually 
the men drove them through in the early morning, 
but I suppose they were delayed at times. 

"A. T. Stewart's grand department store was at 
Chambers Street and Broadway, and to go there 
we took a stage which ran through Eighth Street 
all the way to Broadway and down Broadway to 
the Battery. In winter straw was put on the 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 161 

floor of the stages to keep the passengers' feet 
warm. When we alighted we had to pick the 
straw from our dresses. 

" The old Baptist Church on Second Avenue 
was built by one of our cousins, Colgate. When 
my two older sisters were little girls they went 
in there one Sunday and told the sexton that it 
was their cousin's church and that they could ' sit 
where they pleased !' " How amused must have 
been the sexton at this bit of " cheek " on the part 
of two such correct little girls breaking away from 
home discipline and out on adventures. 

The church stands opposite St. INIarks, and the 
house where the httle girls lived has been made 
one with its neighbor and, under a bright coat of 
yellow paint, its first story enclosed in glass, 
flashes an electric sign, attracting visitors to the 
" Stuy^^esant Casino." Its former elegance can 
still be traced, however, in the fluted columns which 
adorn its fa9ade as well as that of its twin, the 
Campbell house, and no doubt the upper rooms 
retain some of their erstwhile magnificence. 

My friend also told me of her recollection of 
family burials in the old New York Marble Ceme- 
tery, a hidden graveyard enclosed in a block 
further down the avenue, approached by a passage- 
way between houses. But for this passageway, 



162 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

this romantic spot is completely hemmed in by 
dilapidated houses and business buildings, and for 
years was forgotten and neglected, growing wild 
with weeds and suffering slights from the tenement 
dwellers, who dumped refuse freely from their 
back windows upon the vaults of New York's first 
families. During this time the gate at the far end 
of the passageway was of wood and so high that 
nothing could be seen except the tops of trees, and 
one might have passed the cemetery daily without 
suspecting its existence. A fee of ten dollars used 
to be charged for opening a vault, and the revenue 
from interments provided for the care of graves, 
but as these became more and more rare, and 
finally practically ceased, there was no income to 
cover the expense of a caretaker, and the cemetery 
was allowed to run wild. From time to time the 
descendants of the interred removed the bodies of 
their forbears to less obscure resting-places, and 
finally, when the desolation was at its worst, the 
surviving vault owners established a fund for the 
permanent maintenance of the graves. An inter- 
ment was held here as recently as 1914. 

" I'd like to see that Marble Cemetery," writes 
my friend. " I have never even been up to it. 
In olden days the men of the family went to the 
burial places and the women mourned at home. 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 163 

I remember well — a little girl of eight years — the 
October day, looking out of an upper window of 
our home, to see the procession of noted men of 
New York, with long black scarfs across their 
coats, following on foot the heavily draped coffin 
of my aged father." 

The New York Marble Cemetery was estab- 
lished in 1830, about the time that Washington 
Square was redeemed from the potter's field and 
made the centre of a fashionable neighbourhood. 
The names of one hundred and fifty-six original 
vault owners are indexed on marble tablets, on the 
west wall of the cemetery; and, according to an 
ahnost indecipherable inscription on the east wall, 
the enclosure was intended as a " place of inter- 
ment for gentlemen." Fifteen hundred burials 
are recorded, including that of Perkins Nichols, 
who once owned the farm upon which the ceme- 
tery rests. According to the original agreement 
there are no tombstones marking graves, the po- 
sition of vaults being indicated by means of squares 
of marble of uniform size, let into the walls, and 
inscribed simply with the owners' names and the 
numbers of the vaults. At the far end of the 
graveyard is the old dead house of rough-hewn 
stone, a primitive bit of masonry, resembling a 
Spanish dungeon. 



164 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Upon the day in late October, when I had the 
interesting experience of being personally con- 
ducted through this cemetery by the custodian, the 
venerable lilac bushes, which hne the sides of the 
broad walks, were just bursting into bloom, the 
weather being very mild for the time of the year. 
There is always something touching in this final 
protest of nature against the inroads of winter, 
but in the case of the old hlac bushes in this 
neglected graveyard, it seemed doubly charming 
and significant, not only as a symbol of the inverse 
truth, " in the midst of death we are in life," but 
of the renaissance of interest and hope where but 
shortly all had seemed forgotten. 

Having finally summoned courage to ask ad- 
mittance into a place which looks so forbidding 
through its two iron gates, it was more than pleas- 
ant to find the custodian, Mr. Frederick Bommer, 
a man with real antiquarian tastes, and a thorough 
knowledge of the personnel, so to speak, of his 
cemeteries, as well as a picturesque recollection 
of the whole quarter, where he himself was born 
and raised. The question of these forgotten grave- 
yards had been poignantly revived, only that 
morning,* by a sensational story in the newspapers 
about an Italian lad who, in digging and explor- 

* October 17, 1916. 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 165 

ing on a vacant lot at Second Avenue and Second 
Street, diagonally opposite the Marble Cemetery, 
had accidentally broken into an old vault con- 
taining several coffins and a barrel full of bones; 
and fallen therein, to his intense dismay. This 
vault was evidently part of an ancient cemetery 
connected with a Methodist church that once occu- 
pied an adjacent site, and which in 1840 was 
turned into a public school. When, twenty years 
later, the bodies were removed this vault must have 
been sealed up and left. The last building on this 
site was pulled down not long ago to make way 
for a municipal court-house to be erected there. 

Two years after the incorporation of the New 
York Marble Cemetery, the New York City 
Marble Cemetery was started as a rather potent 
rival, and still may be admired as a distinguished 
bit of garden, giving breath to Second Street, 
east of Second Avenue. In this cemetery tomb- 
stones and monuments were allowed, and the vault 
owners seem to have been at some pains to show 
how really lovely such memorials could be made, 
and how worthy of a place in the city beautiful. 
The walls too are covered with vines and most 
appropriate shrubs and trees, in the weeping wil- 
low style, and have been well cared for during 
eighty-odd years. Here are buried Robert Lenox, 



166 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Marinus Willett, Samuel Kip, of Kip's Bay, and 
other celebrities; and here repose, it is said, the 
oldest white men's bones interred on the Island of 
Manhattan, those of the Dutch dominies, in the 
" Ministers' Vault," brought here from their origi- 
nal resting-place at the foot of the island. One of 
the most graceful monuments is to the memory of 
Preserved Fish, a shipping merchant, whose por- 
trait hangs in the Chamber of Commerce. His 
extraordinary name we are now asked to beheve 
was a heritage from his father, and not in honour 
of his miraculous preservation from the perils of 
the sea, whence, it was picturesquely reported, he 
was picked up by whalers in his infancy. The 
body of President James Monroe was first in- 
terred here, and a stone still marks his vault, from 
which his remains were removed, in 1859, and 
taken to Richmond, Virginia. John Ericsson also 
lay here until his body was taken to Sweden. 

Though Astor Place bears no physical trace of 
the old Bouwerie Village, of which it was once 
the centre, it has distinction and interest enough, 
gained in a later period of its history, to satisfy 
the most exigent of loiterers. Perhaps the locality 
is most famous as the scene of the Forrest-Mac- 
ready riots, engendered by the bitter jealousy ex- 
isting between the English and American actors, 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 167 

which assumed the proportions of an international 
quarrel. These two great tragedians had each 
his adherents, and in the month of May, 1847, 
Edwin Forrest's constituents succeeded twice in 
stopping the performance of Macbeth, when Mac- 
ready was billed to play the title role at the Astor 
Place Opera House. 

On the second occasion the performance was 
attempted in response to a petition, signed by 
many prominent citizens, who desired to efface the 
memory of the disgraceful incident of a few days 
previous, and precautions were taken to keep For- 
rest's partisans from the house. This, however, 
only served to augment the trouble; many gained 
admittance, and the performance was again frus- 
trated. Meanwhile an unruly mob gathered out- 
side the theatre, blocking Eighth Street, and 
assaulted the theatre with stones. Macready 
escaped by a rear exit, while a regiment and 
a troop of cavalry cleared Eighth Street and 
reached Astor Place. Before peace was re- 
stored the riot act was read, and thirty-four 
persons were killed and several hundred injured. 
Clinton Hall, at the junction of Eighth Street 
and Astor Place, replaces the old opera house. 

Among the rapidly disappearing landmarks of 
this vicinity is Colonnade Row, already partly de- 



168 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

molished, and going down while I write. The 
wide Lafayette Place, now Lafayette Street, was 
opened through Vauxhall, a pleasure garden 
of great popularity, which ran south of Astor 
Place, between Broadway and Fourth Avenue, to 
about Fifth Street, in 1826, and soon after La 
Grange Terrace, named after Lafayette's home in 
France, was built. Its name was afterwards 
changed to Colonnade Row. Washington Irving 
and the first John Jacob Astor occupied two 
of these residences, and from one of the houses 
President Tyler was married to Julia Gardiner, 
of Gardiner's Island. 

Peter Cooper's house was on the site of the 
present Bible House, at Eighth Street and Third 
Avenue, and his grocery store stood where is now 
the Cooper Union, this philanthropist's great 
legacy to the students of art and science. Denied 
the privileges of education himself, he devoted a 
fortune to the establishment of this benevolent 
enterprise. Started in 1855, it was transferred by 
the founder to the trustees with a handsome in- 
come, in 1859. 

The Museum for the Arts of Decoration, occu- 
pying the fourth floor of the Union, is of a later 
foundation, and has proved of immense service to 
students and specialists in this field. Modelled 




PETER COOPER, BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 
COOPER SQUARE, BOWERY (PAGE l/O) 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 169 

after the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, in Paris, it 
is especially rich in textiles: it contains valuable 
collections of furniture, drawings, engravings, 
casts, and a large collection of encyclopaedic scrap 
books, classified, indexed, and made readily acces- 
sible by means of a chart similar to the chart in 
use at the Paris museum. 

The Decloux Collection of French decorative 
art, of the Eighteenth Century, is an assembly of 
more than five hundred drawings, signed by the 
leading French decorators of the period repre- 
sented, including several by Watteau and Bou- 
cher. The textiles include early Christian, Egyp- 
tian, and Byzantine tapestry ornaments, weavings, 
and embroideries, from the third to the tenth 
centuries, discovered in the tombs at Ahkmin; 
silks, brocades, and printed linens, dating from the 
seventh to the fifteenth centuries, of Persian, By- 
zantine, and Saracenic origin; while the Badia 
Collection of textiles from Barcelona, the Vives 
Collection of velvets from Madrid, the Stanislas 
Baron Collection of early Coptic tapestries from 
Paris, presented by J. Pierpont Morgan, place 
the museum, in this department, on a footing 
with the best of the kind in Europe. 

The museum preserves Robert Blum's original 
design, in oils, for the " Vintage Festival," the 



170 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

decoration made for the Mendelssohn Society, and 
recently removed from Mendelssohn Hall, in For- 
tieth Street. This design is accompanied by sixty- 
four studies of figures and draperies for the dif- 
ferent groups, composing the picture. These, 
besides being of great intrinsic beauty and interest, 
are valuable, to students, in showing how an im- 
portant decoration was conceived and executed. 

Augustus Saint Gaudens' benevolent present- 
ment of Peter Cooper stands within the little park 
enclosed by Cooper Square, at the rear of the 
Union, and, thus placed, the philanthropist com- 
mands a clear view down the Bowery, and pre- 
sides with a fine air of indulgence over the splendid 
" bums " which at all hours of the day and night 
fringe the enclosure. Torn out, root and branch, 
from their historic nesting-places — Mulberry Bend, 
Bandit's Roost, and Ragpicker's Row, by the 
demolition of these picturesque haunts of crime 
which honeycombed the district known as the Five 
Points, Cooper Square has been adopted as a rest- 
ing-place by the vagrants ruthlessly deprived of 
their privacy by the larger interests of public wel- 
fare. Exposed to the searchlight of " civic better- 
ment," they sit idle and impotent, like wolves with 
their teeth drawn. 

What disgust must they feel, these moral de- 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 171 

scendants of Bill Sykes, in contemplating Mul- 
berry Bend " Park " — a children's playground, 
forsooth — where once were houses three deep, with 
scarce a suggestion of courtyard between, and ac- 
cessible only to the knowing ones, by means of 
narrow alleys hardly wide enough for broad 
shoulders to slouch through. Obscure ways led 
beneath houses, over low sheds, to beer cellars and 
dives, headquarters of iniquity, where plots were 
hatched, spoils divided, and many a scoundrel sent 
to his account with all his imperfections on his 
head. 

Now, their dogs chained, their clubs broken, 
they must live in the public eye, sleeping out bored 
lives on the comfortable bench provided by Peter 
Cooper. Kind and tender they are to each other 
in their fallen state, sleeping upon one another's 
shoulders, shielding battered faces from the scorch- 
ing rays of a summer's sun, shifting and accom- 
modating themselves to a brother's comfort with 
exemplary forbearance. 

*' Here we are," they seem to say, " poor ex- 
posed remnants of a valourous company, deprived 
of the exercise of our natural proclivities, thwarted 
in the least of our desires, all ground upon which 
we stood swept from beneath our feet. You say 
we ought to find work. Look at us. Who would 



172 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

have us? What work is there now in these stupid 
commercial times fitted to such as we? Your civ- 
ihzation has crowded out the gentleman of for- 
tune, the highwayman, the bandit, professions ap- 
preciated in other centuries — exterminated in ours. 
What weapons have we against the modern system 
of legitimatized robbery whose magnitude has 
fairly swept away our right to live. There is no 
help for us, we have outlived our time." 

Yet Peter Cooper's large humanity seems to 
embrace these unfortunates, and Saint Gaudens 
has given us an impressive statue of a fine old 
gentleman, whose benevolent schemes for dispos- 
ing of a fortune, acquired during a long and active 
life spanning nearly a century, were as creditable 
to his intelligence as were the enterprises which 
his sagacity fostered. " Like an uncrowned king, 
or a prophet of old," he sits, in his classic niche, a 
tangible presence, a real personality, an extinct 
type. 

Saint Gaudens, who was a student at Cooper 
Union in boyhood days, expresses the fulness of 
that serene majesty of vigorous age by the simplest 
of means — direct portraiture without attempt at 
artistic compromise. Peter Cooper, grown hoary 
and patriarchal, maintains authority through his 
works, and his presence here holds a fallen thor- 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 173 

oughfare to something resembling an ideal; bring- 
ing one up, in one's casual passings, to a sense of 
the permanence of noble effort, of accomplished 
good. 

Cooper Union marks the site of the second mile- 
stone from City Hall, on the old Boston Post 
Road, opened by order of Governor Lovelace, in 
1672. One of the events of the day was to as- 
semble at what is now No. 17 Bowery, to see the 
arrival and departure of the Boston stage, carry- 
ing the United States mail. The first milestone 
stands in its original position on the Bowery, op- 
posite Rivington Street, and the inscription is 
still fairly legible. Another stands on Third Ave- 
nue between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, 
and there are many others, set out originally to 
mark the distance from the old City Hall in Wall 
Street. Benjamin Franklin, when he was post- 
master general, selected the positions for many 
milestones along the highways, driving out in a 
specially contrived wagon for the purpose, and 
measuring off the distances. Some of these so- 
called Franklin milestones are still standing — one 
of them on the Milford Road in Stratford, Con- 
necticut. 

The land east of the " One Mile '" stone was 
owned by James de Lancey, who, in 1733, was 



174 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

chief justice of the colony, and later lieutenant- 
governor. His country house was near the mile- 
stone at the present northwest corner of Delancey 
and Chrystie Streets, and a lane traced the line of 
the broader thoroughfare now leading to the Wil- 
liamsburg Bridge, through a green field to the 
de Lancey house. 

The pediments of the Bowery Savings Bank, at 
Grand Street and the Bowery, are interesting as 
early work of Frederick MacMonnies. The one 
on the Bowery front is best seen from the elevated 
station which crowds the street at this point, com- 
pletely cutting off the view from the street; but 
the Grand Street face is clear, and the sculpture 
in the pediment may be admired for a simplicity 
and restraint characteristic of the sculptor's youth- 
ful period. 

About at the point where the Bowery begins, 
at the northern boundary of Chatham Square, 
stands the Thalia Theatre, on the site of the old 
Bowery Theatre, four times burned, and famous 
in the old days; for here Charlotte Cushman made 
her first appearance in New York, and here were 
notable performances by the elder Booth, Lester 
Wallack, Edwin Forrest, and other dramatic celeb- 
rities. After 1879 it achieved a national repu- 
tation for broad melodrama. The Bowery Theatre 



BOUWERIE VILLAGE 175 

supplanted the historic Bull's Head Tavern, where 
drovers traded, and where Washington and his 
staff, reentering New York, after the British 
evacuation, rested, in 1783. 

Chatham Square existed primitively as an In- 
dian lookout station, called Werpoes, and in 
Dutch days a corral for the protection of cattle 
enclosed the present area of the square. The 
" Kissing Bridge," crossed the Old Wreck Brook, 
close by, and marked the boundary of the little 
city at the time of the Revolution, and near this 
was the " Tea Water Pump," one of the chief 
sources of drinking water in colonial days. 

Crowded in by tenement houses and shut off 
from the street by a crumbling stone wall, topped 
by an iron fence, south of the square on the east 
side, is the first Semitic burying ground in the 
country, consecrated in 1656, and said to contain 
the bodies of Portuguese Jews, the earliest of their 
race to emigrate to New York. This graveyard 
was attached to the first Jewish synagogue in the 
city, at Mill (now South Wilham) Street. Dur- 
ing the Revolution this spot was fortified as one of 
the defences of the city. When the street, known 
as the New Bowery, was cut through the cemetery 
was abbreviated, and this remnant left high above 
the street level. Behind the rusty iron railing are 



176 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

many old brown tombstones, in varying stages of 
decay, inscribed with Hebrew characters and sym- 
bols. The place has infinite suggestion, so out 
of character it is with the surrounding paradox 
of thrift and squalor. Fine neglected shrubs hold 
their own amidst a tangle of rank weeds, and the 
tragic New York cats, lean, hungry, and mys- 
terious, take refuge here from the bustle and con- 
fusion of the dark highway. The ubiquitous 
" Monday's wash," with which New York is strung 
from one end to the other, flutters its grey signals 
from the fire escapes of the Greek tenements that 
enclose this bit of threadbare green, in slatternly 
disregard of common decencies. 

Manhattan Bridge, the last of the bridges which 
span the East River, has completely effected the 
threatened reformation of the district known as 
the Five Points, by introducing into an old and 
squalid quarter the last word in modern engineer- 
ing. Though its objective point is Canal Street, 
it carries one high and dry into the very heart of 
Chatham Square, opens up the formerly elusive 
Chinatown to the most casual of loiterers, thus 
destroying its mysterious and lurking charm. 
Now, while in process of completion, the bizarre 
contrasts make for the intensely picturesque, but 
handsome as is the structure itself, it means, un- 





MANHATTAN BKIUGE, BOWERY TERMINAL 
CARRERE AND HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS 
SCULPTURE BY RUMSEY AND HEBER (PAGE I//) 






DECORATIVE PANEL : COMMERCI 
CARL A. HEBER, SCULPTOR 
DETAIL MANHATTAN BRIDGE 
BOWERY TERMINAL 







BOUWERIE VILLAGE 177 

questionably, the obliteration of one of the most 
extraordinary sections of New York, — one of the 
few parts of a prosaic city where one might lose 
one's self irrevocably and dangerously, in a hope- 
less, labyrinthine slum. 

The architectural features of the bridge are the 
design of that talented firm of architects, to whom 
the city owes so much of fine building — Messrs. 
Carrere and Hastings. Regarding the sculpture, 
the long frieze above the arch on the New York 
side is by C. C. Rumsey; the groups "Com- 
merce " and " Industry," on the piers, are by Carl 
A. Heber; while, on the Brooklyn end, the two- 
seated figm-es, " New York " and " Brooklyn," 
are the work of Daniel Chester French. 

It is not, however, so much the gigantic feat 
of the bridge itself, with its qualities of architec- 
ture and sculpture, that absorbs us, as it is the 
place from which New York looms most vast, most 
spectacular, and most improbable. The amazing 
contrasts in the view presented, from any point 
throughout its length, make it the most famous 
loitering ground in all New York. It is the more 
wonderful because very few people seem to care 
for the long walk across the river, and one may 
have the footpath and the benches more or less to 
one's self, and from many chosen points the spec- 



178 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

tacle presented, especially at dusk, when the lights 
first begin to change the picture, and during all 
the stages of that change, until deep night over- 
takes it, is a thing to hold and to thrill one. The 
stupidity of the immediate foreground is vastly 
mitigated by the endless festoons of wash that 
drape the ugly lines of projecting tenements all 
week long, but more fabulous on Monday, when 
one wonders what the population can be wearing 
with everything so flagrantly in the tub. And 
this supremely domestic touch, in the most metro- 
politan of sights, adds the piquant plausibility 
that confirms the sensation of a vision dreamed 
rather than actually seen. 



IX 
GREENWICH VILLAGE 

The Bossen Bouwerie 

Aenold Bennett^ in his interesting survey of 
our United States, made the perspicacious com- 
ment on the essential difference between the two 
largest American cities, that Chicago is self-con- 
scious while New York is not. If he had had 
more time to devote to a study of the variety 
of life which New York affords, Mr. Bennett 
would probably have been intensely amused to 
find his theory supported by the extreme self- 
consciousness of Greenwich Village, whose popu- 
lation is largely drawn from that middle-western 
metropolis. 

Local historians have always seen Greenwich 
Village as the " American Quarter." This remains 
whimsically true of the present. American life 
is here seen, as it were, in burlesque, following a 
Greenwich Village code of ethics, proclaimed by 
the little club, with the misleading political name, 
which seems to be the mystic shrine for all true 

179 



180 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

believers. Restaurants are hectic, mostly lodged 
in basements and backyards, fitted with long deal 
tables, while the service is of the picnic variety; 
everybody " digs in and scoops 'round " without 
too much dependence upon an overworked func- 
tionary with socialistic tendencies, who prefers 
honourable domestic service to selling his soul in 
commercial pursuits. The cooking is excellent, 
done also by the socialists, and the scale of prices of 
a decent moderation. The proper dinner costume 
for these resorts is something that might be suitable 
for going eel bobbing in a dory, on a dark, dank 
night in summer, for it will not do to be conscious 
of one's raiment, in the sense of protecting it from 
the onslaughts of neighbouring diners or frantic 
waiters.^ Conscious of the picturesque antiquity, 
and, if one may say so, of the uncleanliness of 
their garments, all true Villagers are wearing the 
corduroys of the Latin Quarter, and scorning to 
cut the hair — except, by perversity, the women — 
or shave, or " slick up " — but, despite the effort, 
or because of it, maintaining a certain staginess 
of make-up, and an undoubted suggestion of 
" costume," while the whole setting as well as the 
excessive animation and vivacity of the roysterers 
seems not to express the real, inner life of the 
Village. That, one suspects to be a calm, prac- 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 181 

tical, well-regulated affair enough, — even, per- 
haps, in its practice, a thought Victorian. In 
support of this psychogenesis, a writer in the 
Unpopular Review describes the breakdown of a 
young bride, who, living with her husband in 
Greenwich Village, had finally to confide her hon- 
ourable state to reheve her feelings, but under 
pledge of secrecy, and weepingly, " For," said she, 
" if the Freedom Club knew we were really mar- 
ried, they would — would thi-ink we were nar- 
row- w." 

Conflicting with Mrs. Van Rensselaer's theory, 
that no aborigines made their homes on ^lanliattan 
Island, the Dutch records make reference to the 
Indian Village of Sappokanican, where Hudson 
is supposed to have stopped for supplies, and 
identified as lying east of the Gansevoort Market. 
TAs Peter Stuyvesant is associated with the 
Bouwerie Village, so his predecessor, Wouter Van 
Twiller, the second Dutch governor, is the earliest 
connected with the Greenwich Village. Amongst 
other perquisites of his governorship, this astute 
Dutchman appropriated to himself the Company 
Farm, No. 3, covering the whole of the future 
ninth ward, whose light, loamy soil seemed to him 
to be adapted by Providence to the setting of his 
own private tobacco plantation. His farmhouse, 



182 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

probably the first on the island to be erected 
beyond the protective limit of the fort, marked the 
founding of the Bossen Bouwerie, or farm in the 
woods, by which Sappokanican came to be known 
in the Dutch language. 

The English called it Greenwich, and because 
of its healthfulness and fertility, it became a popu- 
lar place of residence for well-to-do New Yorkers 
in colonial times.^ Commodore Peter Warren, of 
the British Navy, who was here in the service of 
the French and Indian War, bought one of the 
choicest farms, embracing about three hundred 
acres, and built thereon a country seat on an 
eminence overlooking the river, whose site is now 
enclosed by Charles, Fourth, Bleecker, and Perry 
Streets. He had married, in New York, Susan- 
nah de Lancey, a sister of the chief justice, and, 
next to the governor, the most important person- 
age in the province. His large, comfortable house 
was the favourite resort of influential citizens, the 
objective point. for a fashionable afternoon drive, 
being but two miles out of town by the river road. 
This, following the western shore of the island, 
in the line of present Greenwich Street, was 
opened to give access to the several suburban 
estates in this section, of which Commodore War- 
ren's was the nucleus. James Jauncey, William 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 183 

Bayard, and Oliver de Lancey, Lady Warren's 
brother, held adjoining farms, the latter 's estate 
being confiscated during the Revolution because 
of de Lancey's British sympathies. 

Commodore Warren's daughters married well, 
and their connections served to augment the pros- 
perity of the village. When the property was 
divided and new roads opened, their names v/ere 
given to them. Of these. Skinner Road has be- 
come Christopher Street, Fitzroy, Southampton, 
and Abington Roads have all but disappeared, 
while Abington Square still perpetuates the mem- 
ory of Charlotte Warren, the commodore's eldest 
daughter, who married the Earl of Abington. 

The short route to Greenwich Village crossed 
Lispenard's Meadows and the Manetta Brook, 
where there was a causeway; and tides and 
marshes made it so doubtful a thoroughfare in bad 
weather that it was readily abandoned for the 
Inland Road, connecting the village with the 
Bowery, established through the fields in 1768. 
The drive out from town then followed the Post 
Road to Bouwerie Village, turned off to the left 
at what is now Astor Place, followed Obehsk or 
Monument Lane in a direct line to about the 
position of the Washington Arch, and from that 
point to the present Eighth Avenue, just above 



184 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Fifteenth Street. The last section of the old road 
is Greenwich Avenue, at whose terminus stood the 
monument to General Wolf, the hero of Quebec, 
supposed to have been destroyed by the British 
soldiers. 

The Manetta Brook marked the boundary of 
the Bossen Bouwerie when Governor Kieft set 
aside the land as a farm for the Dutch West India 
Company. The brook arose at about the junction 
of Fifth Avenue with Twenty-first Street, flowed 
to about the southwest border of Union Square, 
thence across Washington Square, and along the 
line of Manetta Street, emptying into the North 
River, just north of Charlton Street. It ran 
between sandhills, sometimes rising to a height of 
one hundred feet, and crossed a marsh tenanted 
by wild fowl, and marked the course of a famous 
Indian hunting ground. This brook has never 
been entirely suppressed. It works silently in the 
subterranean passages to which it has been con- 
demned, disturbs foundations, and creates general 
havoc when excavations are attempted. 
'^ Greenwich Village developed at random and 
preserves to this day a picturesque distinction, 
though the Seventh Avenue Subway excavations 
have cut into and clarified many of its most 
tangled parts. From Greenwich Avenue on the 




THE WASHIXCiTOX ARCH AS DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE 
SHOWING THE PANELS, '"FIRST IN WAR" AND "FIRST IN PEACE*' 
BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES (PAGE 20S) 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 185 

south side the streets run away at all sorts of 
angles, while those on the north side are straight 
and regular, showing plainly enough how the by- 
ways of the old village met the streets of the 
commissioners' city plan, making many remark- 
able combinations to the endless confusion of the 
uninitiated.' The case of numbered streets seems 
indeed to offer undue violence to accepted tradi- 
tions, though, as Kingsley said, " Why should the 
combined folly of all fools prove wisdom?" Per- 
haps it is only prejudice that closes the mind to 
the logic of Fourth Street crossing Tenth, Elev- 
enth, and Twelfth Streets at right angles in this 
disjointed region. 

C The section received the final impetus which 
carried it at a bound from a place of more or less 
remote country residence to a thriving suburban 
village, from the yellow fever epidemic which 
broke out in New York in 1822. The city had 
had several scourges of smallpox and fevers, but 
none so violent as this, which drove panic-stricken 
citizens from the town, while the infected district 
was fenced off, that no one might enter it. This 
condition may be the more readily understood 
when we read that " as late as 1820 thirty thou- 
sand hogs roamed the streets of New York, living 
on the garbage thrown into the streets." 



186 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Greenwich was quickly called into requisition 
to meet the situation; the post-office and custom 
house were hastily installed here and many banks, 
insurance offices, and newspapers followed, carry- 
ing with them practically the entire business of 
the metropolis. Bank Street received its name 
as a souvenir of these times, when many wooden 
buildings were hastily constructed throughout its 
length for the accommodation of the banking 
firms of the city. The celerity with which the 
transformation was effected is described by the 
Reverend Mr. Marcelus, whom Devoe, in his 
" Market Book," quotes as saying that he had seen 
corn growing at the present intersection of West 
Eleventh and Fourth Streets, on a Saturday 
morning, and on the following Monday Sykes 
and Niblo had erected there a house capable of 
accommodating three hundred boarders. Even 
the Brooklyn ferryboats ran up here daily. 

Milligan Place and Patchen Place, hopelessly 
side-tracked by the ruthless city planners in their 
insistence on parallelograms, cling to a precarious 
foothold near the old Jefferson prison on Sixth 
Avenue, and have been spasmodically affected by 
the literary colony of the quarter as possessing 
atmosphere, if not light and air. The second 
*' Beth Haim," in the midst of green fields, front- 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 187 

ing on Milligan Lane, established early in the 
nineteenth century, as a branch of the original 
Jewish cemetery at Chatham Square, may be 
identified in the tiny triangular remnant wedged 
in between houses, just off the corner of Eleventh 
Street and Sixth Avenue. When Eleventh Street 
was cut through in 1830, it passed directly through 
this graveyard, destroying most of it. At this 
time it was removed to a spot further out into 
the country, now boxed in by abandoned depart- 
ment stores in Twenty-first Street, a little west 
of Sixth Avenue. Interments were made in this 
place until 1852, when the cemetery was removed 
to Cypress Hills, Long Island, the common coun- 
cil having in that year prohibited burials within 
the city limits. These three burial spots the 
Shearith Israel Synagogue has persistently refused 
to sell, and they stand, each one more curiously 
out of value with its surroundings than the other. 

Throughout Greenwich Village, and between 
that and Chelsea there are to be discovered by 
patient diligence many evidences of the streets 
and courts of the old villages that survived the 
destruction of landmarks by the carrying out of 
the commissioners' plan. Sometimes a passage- 
way between houses will lead into an inner court 
with little frame dwellings or neat brick houses. 



188 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

bearing as they may the indignity with which they 
have been treated. Occasionally a house or two 
have been left standing within deep front yards 
by the purchase of which the proprietor has main- 
tained his frontage on the new thoroughfare; but 
many more lie hidden away in the centre of blocks 
and are to be found only by burrowing through 
narrow alleys, closed by wooden gates, and lead- 
ing to the rear of the outer modern dwellings. So 
completely immured are they that the casual 
observer walking through the neighborhood would 
never suspect their existence. 

Some literary memories are connected with 
Greenwich. Tom Paine passed the closing years 
of his life in a small house in Bleecker Street; 
and Barrow Street, opened after his death, was 
first called Reason Street, in compliment to the 
author of "The Age of Reason." The house 
where he died was demolished when Grove Street 
was widened, in 1836. 

The only way to be comfortable in New York 
is to accept transition as its ruling characteristic; 
neither to mourn the destruction of old landmarks, 
nor to rail against the existing unsightly. Tout 
passe, tout casse, tout lasse was never more truly 
said of human life than of this city, where things 
break, pall, and are forgotten with staggering 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 189 

brevity. 'Not only does nothing last, nothing is 
intended to last, and this has been true ever since 
the Dutch merchants built Fort Manhattan of 
wood, and as rapidly as possible, " because the 
traders did not intend to live in it a great while." 
The same thing, in effect, might be said to-day 
of the skyscraper, built as a seven days' wonder, 
with no thought for longevity. Long before it 
begins to disintegrate it will have been thrown 
down like the card house it so resembles, to make 
room for the latest thing in architecture. Man- 
hattan Island for three hundred years has been 
the architect's and builder's experiment station, 
where — failures or successes — all are destroyed in 
time. 

Let this thought give us courage for a walk 
down Varick Street, to St. John's Chapel, left, in 
the first decade of its second century, almost sole 
survivor of one of the most exclusive parts of 
town some seventy years ago. In the early days 
of the past century, when this second chapel of 
Trinity parish was projected, the way led from 
Greenwich Village over open and partly fenced 
lots and fields, not at that time under cultivation, 
and remote from any dwelling house, except 
Colonel Aaron Burr's former country seat, on an 
elevation called Richmond Hill. The house had 



190 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

been built by Abraham Mortier, commissioner of 
the forces of George III, in 1760, and was occu- 
pied by General Washington as his headquarters 
in the year 1776, and later by Vice-President 
Adams. Aaron Burr took it in 1797, improved 
the grounds, constructed an artificial lake, long 
known as Burr's Pond, and entertained lavishly 
during ten years of residence. The approach was 
through a beautiful entrance gateway at what is 
now the intersection of Macdougal and Spring 
Streets, while the site of the house is embraced 
within the block lying northwest of this junction. 
Through the gateway, we are to suppose, walked 
Aaron Burr early one summer morning, in 1804, 
to his appointment with Alexander Hamilton on 
the heights of the Jersey shore, just above Wee- 
hawken, where the duel took place. Hamilton, 
mortally wounded, was carried to William Bay- 
ard's house. No. 8 Jane Street, in Greenwich 
Village, where he died next day. 

A well-beaten path led from the village to the 
city, crossing a ditch through Lispenard's salt 
meadows, now flowing peacefully through a cul- 
vert under Canal Street. This was the same 
swamp, of course, as that surrounding Collect 
Pond, and for many years it made a large part 
of the valley, that crossed the island at what is 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 191 

now Canal Street, a dangerous quagmire. So 
many cattle were lost by straying into it that bars 
were put up across Broadway and the whole area 
of the swamp was fenced off by order of council. 
It was Anthony Rutgers who drained the marsh, 
receiving in consideration of his service to the com- 
munity a gift of the whole affected area, in all a 
parcel of seventy acres, one of the neatest trans- 
actions in real estate recorded since the days of 
Governor Minuit. The meadows were named for 
Leonard Lispenard, Rutgers' son-in-law, who 
inherited the property. 

To-day one must make one's way down Varick 
Street over the debris of the new subway exten- 
sion that has demoralized Seventh Avenue and 
destroyed quaint bj^ways in Greenwich Village. 
Varick Street was named for the mayor of New 
York, whose portrait by Trumbull hangs in City 
Hall. His country residence, " Tusculmn," on 
an elevation east of Manetta Brook, gave colour 
to the locality; and its site is commemorated by 
Varick Place, in narrow Sullivan Street. The 
picturesque confusion caused by the extensive 
excavations, as well as the widening of Vaiick 
Street, enhances greatly, for the moment, the value 
of the contrasts of that once quiet thoroughfare. 
Seventh Avenue has been carried in a direct line 



192 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

across the tangle of village streets, from its former 
terminus in Greenwich Avenue to where Varick 
Street starts out, at the lower end of Hudson 
Park, leaving devastation in its wake. It is as 
though a great knife had cut neatly through, 
taking out a rhomboidal section, and leaving odds 
and ends of the buildings that met its blade stand- 
ing to be patched up and made the best of by 
indignant property-owners. Strange segments of 
houses stand exposed, like dolls' houses, and one 
can stare into three stories of the domestic tragedy 
at a glance, while the owner of this triangular 
remnant of his home casts about for the best 
means of meeting his dilemma. 

The widening process has taken a liberal slice 
from the left-hand side of Varick Street, and with 
it block after block of nice old houses similar in 
period to those intact on the opposite side of the 
way, meeting no serious obstacle in its path until 
it came to St. John's, at whose demohtion the long- 
suffering public drew the line. At present the 
historic old structure juts out from the surveyor's 
line, and when the street is paved the sidewalk 
will run under the portico of the church, and the 
floor will be levelled to that of the sidewalk. 
Precedent for this solution of the problem, which 
the church presented, exists in the similar treat- 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 193 

ment of the churches of St. Michael and St. 
Philip, in Charleston, South Carolina. 

This variation in the straight line is highly- 
desirable in its effect on the aspect of the street 
and the opportunity it affords for picturesque 
views of the church. Going south one has a con- 
tinuous, shifting picture of the delicate spire of 
St. John's silhouetted against the huge light mass 
of the Woolworth Building, the highest achieve- 
ment in skyscrapers, which counts nowhere so 
favourably as in the walk down Varick Street, 
unless it be from the Manhattan Bridge. Like 
the duomo in Florence, it must be seen from afar 
and, if possible, from an eminence to appreciate 
its magnitude. From the bridge it takes its part 
as the dominating factor in a situation where 
everything is on a fabulous scale; in Varick Street 
it looms suddenly, and gains improbability from 
a humble provincial environment with which it is 
thoroughly out of proportion. 

One of several lines of superannuated horse-cars 
runs along this street over the buried subway. The 
type dates back some forty years, and to see the 
cars ambling along, the driver flourishing a long 
whip, and the conductor standing sheepishly, on the 
broken-down platform at the rear, one might 
fancy one's self transported back to the Centen- 



194 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

nial period. Surely this relic, more than the 
Woolworth Building, bespeaks the metropolis. 
No other city would dare offer its inhabitants so 
antiquated a mode of conveyance, yet in this quiet 
section, marked by the sincere brick dwellings of 
the last century, it jingles along appropriately 
enough, and even braves its way through New 
Chambers Street, offering a bizarre extreme to 
the ponderous Manhattan Building, and compet- 
ing with the most modern means of transportation 
in the world. 

Prior to the completion of the City Hall, St. 
John's was considered the finest building in the 
city. The corner-stone was laid in 1803, at which 
time the locahty was a swamp overgrown by brush, 
inhabited by frogs and snakes. In front, a sandy 
beach stretched down to the river at Greenwich 
Street. The Trinity corporation was greatly 
criticized for establishing a chapel, especially so 
large and fine a one, " so far uptown," and, to 
meet the argument of its remoteness, Trinity laid 
out a handsome square directly in front of the 
church, with pleasant walks, flower-beds, and trees 
and shrubs, and made it a private park for the 
use of citizens who might purchase the encircling 
lots. The park became a paradise for birds — 
robins, bluebirds, wrens, and Baltimore orioles 



ikf 



3^^A. 



iJ'M 




THE DELICATE SPIKE oK ST. JOHN 
FROM A WATER COLOR SKETCH 
BY JESSIE BANKS (PAGE I94) 



ST. JOHN S FROM YORK STREET 
KTCHED BY ANNE GOLDTHWAITE 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 195 

nested in the trees, and filled the air with color 
and song. Many of the better class citizens of 
the young metropolis were attracted to this new 
neighbourhood; and Alexander Hamilton, General 
Schuyler, and General Morton, as well as the 
Drakes, Lydigs, Coits, Lords, Delafields, Ran- 
dolphs, and Hunters, were among those who 
owned the houses and had keys to the park, to 
which no outsiders were admitted. 

The chapel stood within its own garden facing 
the square, and, that the neighbourhood should 
not be depressed by the thought of death, the 
burying ground was established further out 
towards Greenwich Village, and has lately been 
made over into Hudson Park at the end of Varick 
Street. Sir Christopher Wren was again followed 
in the style of the chapel, which is much larger 
and more imposing than any other of the old 
churches in New York. John McComb, the 
builder of City Hall, was the architect, and St. 
Martin's-in-the-Fields was the model. The ma- 
terial was stone, rough cast and painted to sim- 
ulate the brownstone of which the portico, with 
its Corinthian columns, is built, and of which the 
trims are made. The bell, the clock in the steeple, 
and the fine old hand-wrought iron fence, now 
rotting in a rubbish heap in the desolate garden, 



196 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

were brought over from England. The chapel 
has been closed for some time, but there is an 
intelligent custodian and it is quite possible to 
inspect the interior. Until June 1, 1916, a curate 
came from St. Luke's Chapel to conduct a seven 
o'clock service. Sometimes, the sexton told me, 
as many as ten persons attended. 

The galleries, columns, and pulpit are original, 
contributing charm to a somewhat gloomy interior, 
an effect enhanced by the depressing colour of the 
whole. 

What the new subway when finished will mean 
for this luckless neighbourhood, who can tell? In 
the brief span of a man's life it has passed through 
all the stages that lie between birth and decay 
with unprecedented swiftness. Its aristocratic 
high-water mark was reached about sixty years 
ago, when the church and park were the centre 
of one of the most dignified parts of town, a con- 
dition maintained for scarce a decade, when its 
slow decline was precipitated by Trinity's sale of 
St. John's Park to the Hudson River Railroad 
Company for one million dollars. Thus were the 
community, the church, and the park crushed 
utterly, in 1869, the date being recorded on the 
unsightly freight station planted squarely over the 
whole four acres of unfortunate park — a stagger- 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 197 

ing blow from which there was no hope of recov- 
ery. The cruelty of this blight is poignant to this 
day, and it wrings the heart to see to what depths 
of degradation the wide-front houses, of which 
many stately wrecks remain, have fallen. Erics- 
son was the one man of position who refused to 
be dislodged by this disastrous caprice of fortune. 
He lived and died in the first of the remaining 
block of houses on the south side of the erstwhile 
park, No. 36 Beach Street. There is nothing but 
the shell of this mansion to recall its former dig- 
nity. The silver handles are gone, the escutcheons 
sold for old metal, the fluted columns flanking the 
entrance slant at opposing angles, doors swing 
wide on rusty, broken hinges, and motley tenants 
come and go staring defiantly at the aesthetic 
loiterer who lingers before the threshold in a 
complexity of reverie. 

The cheerful flippancy with which the Hudson 
River Railroad Company stamped out every trace 
of the poetic charm that once this locality exhaled, 
the supreme egoism that never questioned its ex- 
clusive right to live at the expense of a whole 
conmiunity, is immortalized in that most outra- 
geous " art treasure " in New York — the incred- 
ible sheet-iron pediment, erected on the Hudson 
Street front of the freight station in honour of the 



198 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

railway achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt. 
This atrocious mass of sculpture consists of a 
central full-length statue of the commodore, 
standing in a niche; on his right Ceres, on his left 
Neptune, lolling in abandoned attitudes, made the 
more ludicrous by the loss of sections of their legs 
and arms, exposing the hollow sham of their sup- 
posed anatomy, within the which nest pigeons. 
The intervening spaces between the statue and 
the mythological figures are crammed with a mass 
of detail representing ships and shipping, trains 
and steam engines running headlong into one 
another, in a valiant effort to express the stupen- 
dous activities of a life of business adventure in 
which the extermination of a neighbourhood was 
a mere incident. If one questions the state of 
society that permitted so monstrous a piece of 
vandalism as the carrying of a freight station into 
the garden spot of a city's most reserved quarter, 
this work of art surmounting the whole egregious 
mass of fact is the terrific answer. 

A cold spring or summer day, with a touch 
of Scotch mist in the atmosphere, is the most sym- 
pathetic to the understanding of Varick Street 
and its environs. Charlton, Vandam, and Domi- 
nink Streets are full of quiet self-respecting private 



GREENWICH VILLAGE 199 

dwellings. The little brick houses of two, two 
and a half, and three stories date from about sixty 
years ago, but among them, here and there, are 
many wooden dwelHngs of a much earlier period. 
In Dominink Street, especially, are to be found 
old frame houses with hip-roofs, brass door-knobs 
and numbers, immaculately clean; one boasts even 
a well-worn name-plate in pohshed brass, while a 
paradise tree shades the front and protects the view 
where adjoining houses have been torn away. 

Behind St. John's Chapel, York Street opens 
a distinguished vista of the church and steeple 
above the stone wall that encloses the eminence on 
which it stands, the lower streets having been 
levelled in accordance with the commissioners' 
plan. Across the rear of the chancel enclosure, 
the paradise tree again, friend of the fallen, throws 
its protecting shade in a graceful effort to miti- 
gate the desolation of its lonely, unaffiliated state, 
and all this charm can be taken in in a flash 
from the elevated train, as it whisks one by, on 
its noisy way downtown; and a moment after, 
in the street below, one may catch a glimpse of 
the sole surviving remnant of Annetje Jans' 
Farm, of which all this section bounded by the 
river, and as far north as Tenth Street in Green- 
wich Village, was a part. 



X 

WASHINGTON SQUARE 

Washington Square as the base line of Fifth 
Avenue draws therefrom inevitable distinction, 
and extends its Palladian influence as far north 
as Twelfth Street in that thoroughfare, beyond 
which it rapidly loses all control of the most way- 
ward street in the world. The square's own dig- 
nity, as a centre of refinement and elegance, has 
been retrenched and violated on all sides except 
the north, which still presents, with one exception, 
the " Row " of period houses built by wealthy 
New Yorkers of the early thirties, when society, 
always seeking foothold apart from business inva- 
sion, settled eagerly in this promising locality. 

The growth of the city northward was acceler- 
ated by the yellow fever epidemic of 1822, which 
populated Greenwich Village, and was now to 
result beneficently for the marshy land lying, be- 
tween Greenwich and Bouwerie Villages, along 
Monument Lane. The swamp and waste land 
hereabout, forming part of the farm of Elbert 

200 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 201 

Herring, had been purchased by the city for a 
potter's field in 1797 ; and here were buried during 
the scourges which swept the city early in the 
past century thousands of bodies, many of which 
still lie beneath the soil of Washington Square. 
That it was not strictly a paupers' burying ground 
was proven by the unearthing of gravestones (a 
luxury not allowed paupers) when, in 189Q, ex- 
tensive excavations were made for the foundations 
of the Washington Arch. 

But all memory of paupers and yellow fever, as 
well as of the gallows that once formed a con- 
siderable attraction in this pleasant spot, seems as 
remote as do those earlier stories of trout fishing 
in the ^lanetta Brook, and of wild-duck shooting 
in the marsh, through which it wandered, now 
Washington Square. The potter's field was lev- 
elled, filled in, and abandoned in 1823; additional 
land was added four years later, and, under the 
new title of Washington Parade Ground, walks 
were laid out, trees planted, and the whole en- 
closed by a wooden fence. 

Among the merchants who built along the upper 
side of the square, in 1831, were Thomas Suffern, 
John Johnston, George Griswold, Saul Alley, 
James Boorman, and William C. Rhinelander. 
Their houses had deep gardens with gay, box- 



202 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

bordered flower-beds, beyond which stretched the 
open country. As the avenue was developed, little 
by little, and the first streets opened to the east 
and west of these early beginnings, these houses 
were accepted as the type for the neighbourhood, 
which was all for the elegance of simplicity and 
fine proportions, while what detail was used was 
of the best. This was happily before the brown- 
stone blight had left its trail upon domestic archi- 
tecture, and the fluted columns with carved capi- 
tals, the window trimmings, and front steps are 
all of white marble, contrasting neatly with the 
cheerful red brick of the period. This happy 
influence, here concentrated, gives to the whole 
neighbourhood a distinction of its own. In many 
cases the houses are still tenanted by the descend- 
ants of the original owners, others, notably the 
little two-and-a-half-story dwellings in Eleventh 
Street, known as Brides' Row, have been reclaimed 
by intelligent real estate dealers, and restored to 
their pristine quaintness. 

Until 1894 the old grey castellated buildings 
of the New York University, built in 1837, stood 
on the east side of the square. In the old build- 
ing Morse established his studio — he was perhaps 
the first artist to work in Washington Square — 
and here he experimented with the telegraph. 




"WASHINGTOX THE SULDIEr" BY HERMON A. MACNEIL 
PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE PLASTER IX PLACE OX LEFT PIER 
WASHINGTON ARCH (PAGE 20/) 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 203 

Here also Draper wrote, and perfected his inven- 
tion of the daguerrotype ; and Colt invented the 
revolver named for him. Nearby is the site of the 
house, also long since demolished, where Henry 
James was born. He himself has described feel- 
ingly the impossibility of reconstructing, out of 
the uncompromising mass of stone-faced girders 
clapped down over the scene of such hallowed 
memories, any of the tender sentiment that the 
square must have at that time expressed. One 
can but turn one's back to the displeasing, and 
get what one can from the fine physique of the 
square itself and the picture, wherein swarms of 
alien workers make holiday against a background 
of classic souvenirs. The Italian residents, whose 
quarter touches the southern extremity of the 
square, have made the place more homelike for 
themselves by the erection, in 1888, of Turini's 
statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, under whose patri- 
otic influence their children may imbibe more of 
hero worship than of art. 

Ward's bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, the 
American inventor and engineer, associated with 
the manufacture of Bessemer steel, was given to 
the city the following year, and with its fine archi- 
tectural setting, by Thomas Hastings, erected in 
Washington Square as one of the improvements 



204 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

to the locality, inspired by the centenary anniver- 
sary of Washington's inauguration. 

The chief of these improvements, the Wash- 
ington Arch, was erected as a temporary Arc de 
TriompJie for the celebration of this event, at the 
expense of William Rhinelander Stewart and 
other residents of Washington Square. It was 
considered so successful that a fund was raised, by 
popular subscription, to make it a permanent 
memorial to the first President, and the present 
arch was finished in 1895. To this fund Pade- 
rewski, then making his initial tour of this coun- 
try, devoted the proceeds of one of his piano 
recitals. The arch is one of those carefully 
transplanted bits of foreign architecture by which 
one soon learns, in New York, to recognize the 
hand of Stanford White. Very perfect and 
charming in themselves, they have no special rele- 
vancy to the city, nor to the purpose to which 
they have been adapted, and stand in time and 
character as so many exotics in a provincial 
setting. 

Nevertheless, to take from New York the works 
of Stanford White would be to rob it of its 
greatest beauty. He did much for architecture 
in New York; his name stood for quality and he 
took care to associate with himself, in the execu- 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 205 

tion of details in the buildings, the best available 
artists of his time. Saint Gaudens, La Farge, and 
White made a powerful trio twenty to thirty 
years ago when they left their big mark in the 
field in which they collaborated. At the time, too, 
that the Washington Arch was made, MacMon- 
nies was a young sculptor, just coming into prom- 
inence. His French training, at the Ecole des 
Beaux Arts, especially qualified him for the work 
that WTiite needed on his Triumphal Arch, and 
the beautifully executed spandrels show how 
fully he understood his problem. They have, 
with all their grace and charm, the inestimable 
quality of flatness — of resting in one plane — 
essential to the harmony of this architectural 
result. 

Together the two artists conceived and planned 
the completion of the sculptures for the arch — for 
years left in an unfinished state — and, fired with 
the richness of the idea for which the memorial 
was meant to stand, MacMonnies sailed away to 
Paris, and there in his studio he made the sketches 
for the two groups of Washington — " First in 
War, First in Peace " — which were to symbolize 
the great outstanding features of the subject and 
give point and flavour to the arch as a commemora- 
tive monument. These were the groups that were 



206 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

to have been placed against the piers of the arch, 
on the side facing the avenue. 

These groups, designed by MacMonnies, were 
enthusiastically approved by White as exactly 
expressing his thought for the arch, and accepted 
as final. They show — the sketches have been pre- 
served — Washington, the Commander-in-Chief, 
and Washington, the President, accompanied in 
each case by two allegorical figures. The Com- 
mander is being crowned by Courage and Hope 
— the President by Wisdom and Justice. The 
figures are in full relief against a panoply of flags. 
Made twenty-five years ago, in the flux of the 
sculptor's most youthful, imaginative period, they 
have infinite charm and a richness, both of idea 
and sculptural quality, that is not of this age. 

Most unhappily they were never carried out. 
The work was at first deferred owing to lack of 
funds and with White's subsequent death the 
whole question of the completion of the arch was 
allowed to lapse for so long a time that it became 
ancient history. When the project of the two 
groups for the piers was recently revived, Mr. 
MacMonnies was in France and the architect 
dead; and so the commissions were turned over 
to two resident sculptors without further cere- 
mony. 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 207 

Unfortunately, instead of setting aside the 
original scheme entirely and conceiving something 
quite different, just enough of the first design 
was retained to recall ]MacMonnies' sketch with- 
out giving its essential quahties. Where the orig- 
inal shows the group as an inspired ensemble of 
figures in high relief, set as a " bouquet " against 
the pier, the later development is unpleasantly 
unrelated to the surface of the arch. 

Furthermore MacNeil's panel, which is in place, 
may be criticized as too small in design and too 
large in scale. The single figure of Washington 
is not rich enough and its size is entirely too big 
for the scale of the arch. The result is ruinous 
to the arch itself; all its charming elegance of 
proportion is destroyed by this insistent presence 
on the left pier. Mr. Calder's group is in 
the cutter's hands; its general features corre- 
spond to those of MacNeil's panel, while the mod- 
elHng is much bolder, and the whole gesture more 
dramatic. 

We had learned to accept the arch in its unfin- 
ished state as a rather cold but very perfect little 
monument. MacMonnies' sculpture was to have 
added the warmth of the related note that was to 
have brought its perennial significance promi- 
nently before us. In its present state that is 



208 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

gone; but since New York delights in demolition 
a mistake which seems unpardonable may some 
day be rectified. 

We have Stanford White and John La Farge 
in handsome combination, on the lower side of 
the square, in the Judson Memorial — the Baptist 
temple erected to honour Adoniram Judson, 
the celebrated missionary to Burmah, where he 
settled in 1813. He translated the Bible into 
Burmese and wrote a Burmese-English dictionary. 
The style of the building is chaste, while the pure 
white interior of the chapel renders immensely 
effective the La Farge windows of which there 
are twelve, the one exception being the memorial 
window to John Knott, which was executed after 
Mr. La Farge's death, by a pupil, from designs 
left by the artist. The two floating angels, bear- 
ing an inscribed tablet in memory of Joseph 
Blachley Hoyt, placed over the pool, behind the 
platform, are by Herbert Adams. 

We have the three artists. La Farge, White, 
and Saint Gaudens in the perfection of collabora- 
tion at Tenth Street, in that dim old church of 
1840, built in response to the needs of the growing 
community that settled about the square, as it 
began to reach into the gradually developing ave- 
nue. Its name is wonderfully perpetuated in La 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 209 

Farge's chef d'oeuvre, the great " Ascension," 
that fills the west wall of the chancel, and so 
absorbs the interest of the visitor, who may stray 
into this silent place, that he is only vaguely con- 
scious of the " rich note of interference," as James 
says, that comes " through the splendid window- 
glass, the finest of which, unsurpassingly fine, to 
my sense, is the work of the same artist; so that 
the church, as it stands, is very nearly as com- 
memorative a monument as a great reputation 
need wish." That there is this interference is 
only too manifest, when one puts one's mind on 
it, perhaps the more so that the windows are not 
all by La Farge and so the more disturbing, 
though his have been made the type. If they 
were not all of the uniform style, carrying out 
La Farge's discoveries in coloured glass, there 
would not be the distraction of testing one's 
shrewdness in separating the real from the spu- 
rious, a temptation which assails one in the midst 
of one's highest feeling for the decoration, whose 
sufficiency pervades and dominates the dusk in- 
terior. And so one comes always back to it as, 
after all, the thing, the enduring thing for this 
edifice. 

La Farge made it within a stone's throw of its 
destination, in the old Studio Building in Tenth 



210 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Street, so that it has the rare advantage, for New 
York, of having been produced and placed under 
homogeneous conditions. The adornment of the 
chancel is the work of several artists, under the 
general direction of the three collaborators, the 
altar and reredos in stone mosaic lending extraor- 
dinary texture and quality to the wall under the 
great painting. The windows cover a period of 
twenty years of La Farge's life. The Southworth 
Memorial was done by the firm of La Farge and 
Wright, in 1890, and the Davies Coxe Memorial 
by La Farge, in 1908, shortly before his death. 
They mark what was then a new departure in 
stained glass, based upon the artist's personal 
experiments and discoveries. 

Finding it almost impossible to obtain the 
quality of execution he wanted on the glass, La 
Farge made experiments with the material itself, 
by the introduction of opalescent qualities, by let- 
ting the colours run into one another, and by 
twisting and flattening the glass while still soft, 
obtaining varied and graduated tones. The twist- 
ing of the glass gave also creases and ridges that 
could be utilized in expressing drapery. With 
these qualities of material at his disposal Mr. La 
Farge conceived the idea of eliminating altogether 
the painting on glass, except for faces and hands, 




STUDY MODEL OF WASHINGTON 
SUPPORTED BY THE FIGURES OF W 
FOR THE RIGHT PIER, WASHINGTON ARCH 
BY ALEXANDER STIRLING CALDER (PAGE 207) 



; PRESIDENT 

DOM AND JUSTICE 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 211 

thus preserving in its greatest purity the trans- 
parency and brilliancy of the colours, and at the 
same time not sacrificing light and shade. 

This method has been criticized as " substituting 
accident for design," since, it has been argued, 
the only part of the design which it leaves com- 
pletely under the control of the artist is the shape 
of the separate pieces of glass and, therefore, the 
leads which unite these and form the chief out- 
lines in stained glass. Any lines of draperies et 
cetera, within these, and all shadows depend abso- 
lutely on what the artist can find in the accidents 
of his materials that will approximately suit his 
purpose.* 

The English critics, with their respect for tradi- 
tion, felt that La Farge's method sacrificed design 
for colour. While there may be some truth in 
this, so long as one need not definitely choose for 
life between the one and the other, La Farge's 
discovery remains an important contribution to 
the metier, and his windows hold an unique place 
in the history of stained glass. 

The pleasant old garden-walled house on the 
northwest corner of Washington Square and Fifth 
Avenue preserves intact its 1830 character, noth- 
ing having been added or subtracted since it first 

* Henry Holiday. "Stained Glass as an Art," p. 160. 



212 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

marked the gateway of the incipient avenue. 
James Boorman's house on the opposite corner 
has more personal interest for me. His niece has 
made it live for me in her conversations and letters 
about old New York. She writes of her sister 
having been sent to boarding school at Miss 
Green's, No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and of how she used 
to comfort herself, in her homesickness for the 
family, at Scarborough-on-the-Hudson, by looking 
out of the side windows of her prison at her uncle, 
" walking in his flower garden in the rear of his 
house on Washington Square." " \\Tien my uncle 
built his house," writes my correspondent, " it was 
all open country behind it. My mother has told 
me of attending a dinner-party there, soon after 
my uncle moved in, and of looking out of the back 
windows at the fields." 

The house was sold, after his widow's death, and 
joined to the Duncan house, next door; and the 
entrance to the corner house was made into a bay 
window and others were added to the Fifth Ave- 
nue side. Mr. Boorman built also the houses 
Nos. 1 and 3 Fifth Avenue (now No. 1), and 
in the rear two stables, one for his own use and 
one leased to Mrs. Duncan. These were the 
nucleus of the lively settlement of painters and 
sculptors that now, having converted the stables 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 213 

into picturesque studios, give character to the 
neighbourhood. Washington Mews and JNIc- 
Dougal Alley were unheard-of until the artists 
brought them into notice. 

At No. 1 Fifth Avenue, James Boorman * es- 
tabhshed his only sister, Mrs. Esther Smith, in a 
select school for young ladies, which occupied the 
two houses, Nos. 1 and 3, joined together, and 
opened in 1835. This was an old established 
school, having started in 1816 in the St. John's 
Park neighbourhood. 

Miss Green came from Worcester, Massachu- 
setts, when a girl of eighteen, to be a teacher in 
Mrs. Smith's school; and she and her sister even- 
tually succeeded to the management. Their 
brother, Andrew H. Green, called the "father 
of Greater New York," gave his advice and aid 
and, in 1844, taught a class in American history. 
The Union Theological Seminary, on Washington 
Square, furnished students to teach history and 
philosophy courses, and amongst the distinguished 
men who lectured in Miss Green's school were 
Felix Foresti, professor at the University and at 
Columbia College, Clarence Cook, Lyman Abbott, 
and Elihu Root, then a young man, fresh 

* An excellent portrait of James Boorman, by Rossiter, hangs 
in the Chamber of Commerce, of which the sitter was a member 
for nearly fifty years. 



214 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

from college. John Bigelow taught botany at 
one time, and John Fiske delivered a course of 
lectures. 

Miss Boorman has often told me of the amuse- 
ment that the shy theological students and other 
young teachers afforded the girls in their classes, 
and how delighted these used to be to see instruc- 
tors fall into a trap which was unconsciously pre- 
pared for them. The room in which the lectures 
were given had two doors, side by side and exactly 
alike, one leading into the hall and the other into 
a closet. The young men having concluded their 
remarks, and feeling some relief at the successful 
termination of the ordeal, would tuck their books 
under their arms, bow gravely to the class, open 
the door, and walk briskly into the closet. Even 
Miss Green's discipline had its limits, and when the 
lecturer turned to find the proper exit he had to 
face a class of grinning school girls not much 
younger than himself, to his endless mortification. 
Elihu Root met recently at a dinner a lady who 
asked him if he remembered her as a member of 
his class at Miss Green's school. " Do I remem- 
ber you? " the former secretary of state replied. 
" You are one of those girls who used to laugh at 
me when I had to walk out of that closet." 

Lower Fifth Avenue traverses the old " Minto " 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 215 

and Brevoort farms which adjoined each other, 
according to the old maps, somewhere about 
Tenth Street and covered the territory south of 
Union Square, extending east to about Fourth 
Avenue. The lower farm, touching Washington 
Square, is now the estate of the Sailors' Snug 
Harbour, founded by Robert Richard Randall, 
who when about to die, in 1801, dictated a will 
leaving twenty-one acres " seeded to grass," con- 
stituting the Minto farm, for the establishment of 
a home for old and disabled seamen. This was in 
memory of his father. Captain Thomas Randall, 
the commander of the Fox, a freebooter of the 
seas, who in later life became a wealthy and repu- 
table merchant in Hanover Street. Captain Ran- 
dall was coxswain of the barge crew of thirteen 
ships' captains who rowed General Washington 
from Ehzabethtown Point to New York for his 
inauguration. A line drawn through Astor Place 
to the Washington Arch, up Fifth Avenue to 
about Tenth Street, with Fourth Avenue as an 
eastern boundary, would roughly outline this farm, 
which Robert Randall added to the land inherited 
from his father, in 1790, paying five thousand 
pounds for a property now worth twice as many 
millions. It was his intention that the mansion 
house in which he had lived should be converted 



216 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

into the snug harbour, and the surrounding farm 
lands cultivated to supply the inmates with fruit, 
vegetables, and grain, according to their require- 
ments. The relatives contested the will (made by 
Alexander Hamilton and Daniel D. Tompkins), 
and only after many years' litigation was it finally 
settled, when the trustees decided to lease the land 
and purchase the Staten Island property, where 
the home is now located. This land, like the 
grants deeded to the Trinity corporation, became 
leasehold property in perpetuity, a fact which re- 
tarded its development with a perceptible effect 
upon the growth of the city. Recently the re- 
modelling of Washington Mews and Eighth Street 
as an artists' quarter has made changes in the lo- 
cality and will bring many artists to the new stu- 
dios. 

Hendrick Brevoort's farm has left, too, its in- 
delible trace upon the layout of the city, a valor- 
ous descendant of the old burgher having defied 
the commissioners to destroy his homestead, which 
lay in the proposed path of Broadway, or to cut 
down a favourite tree which blocked the intended 
course of Eleventh Street. He is said to have 
stood at his threshold with a blunderbuss in his 
trembling old hands, when the workmen arrived 
to carry out their instructions to demolish the 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 217 

house; and to have carried his point with such 
thoroughness that Broadway was deflected from 
its course, causing the present bend in that thor- 
oughfare at Tenth Street, while Eleventh Street 
between Broadway and Fourth Avenue was never 
completed. Soon after the first attempt to violate 
his property Grace Church was built and now that 
its rectory and garden cover the disputed territory 
it is not likely that the street will ever be cut 
through, nor Broadway straightened. 

Grace Church in Broadway and the First Pres- 
byterian Church in Fifth Avenue were built 
about the same time, following the establishment 
of a fashionable centre in this region. Grace 
Church was built by James Renwick, Jr., the 
architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and a de- 
scendant of Henry Brevoort, in 1846. It contains 
many souvenirs of old New York, including the 
corner-stone of the original church, erected in 
1806 at Broadway and Rector Street, opposite 
Trinity, and a stone tablet to the memory of 
Henry Brevoort who died in 1841, aged ninety- 
four, " in possession of the ground on which this 
church now stands." The chancel building, re- 
redos, east window, the chantry adjoining Grace 
House, and the greater organ were erected in 
1878-1882 by Catherine Lorillard Wolf in memory 



218 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

of her father, John David Wolf, senior warden 
of the church at the time of his death. 

On the Tenth Street corner of the church stood 
for many years the Fleischmann restaurant and 
bakery, and here the " Bread Line," only recently 
suspended, became one of the institutions of the 
city ; the firm gave away every night the bread and 
rolls unsold during the day, a practical charity 
much appreciated. Men, women, and children 
stood until midnight to receive their dole of bread. 
This bit of local colour was swept away by the 
recent improvement to the exterior of the church, 
by which Huntington Close, with its open-air 
pulpit, was opened and dedicated to the memory 
of William Reed Huntington, for twenty-five 
years rector of the parish. Always deeply in- 
terested in beautifying the church, and with the 
hope of preserving it for years to come, it was 
Dr. Huntington who planned this outside pulpit, 
with its garden enclosure for summer services, to 
meet the altered conditions under which the fine 
old church now stands, hoping to prolong its 
active hfe. The Beatitudes form the subject 
of the elaborately carved pulpit, designed by 
William Renwick, architect, and Jules Edouard 
Roine, sculptor. 

Another Henry Brevoort, a descendant of the 




Copyright by John La Farge 



"the ascension," mural painting by JOHN I.A FARGE 

IN THE CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION 

FIFTH AVENUE AND TENTH STREET (PAGE 209) 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 219 

original proprietor of the farm in New Nether- 
land, built the substantial old double house at the 
corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, which 
preserves its fine iron balconies, its pillared door, 
within a small green enclosure, and a walled gar- 
den to one side. Across the way the Brevoort 
House maintains the name, distinguished in these 
parts, and brings a distinct French flavour into 
the avenue, the house being famous for its cuisine, 
and largely patronized by the transient French 
population of the city. The first masked ball 
given in New York was held in 1840 in the house 
of Henry Brevoort, an affair long held in dis- 
repute by society on account of the occasion it 
furnished Miss Mathilda Barclay, the beautiful 
daughter of Anthony Barclay, the British consul, 
to elope in fancy dress, domino, and mask with 
young Burgwyne of South Carolina, of whom her 
parents strongly disapproved. She went as Lalla 
Rookh and he as Feramorz, and in this disguise 
they slipped away from the ball, at four o'clock 
in the morning, and were married. Anthony Bar- 
clay was later dismissed for raising recruits dur- 
ing the Crimean War. 

At Twelfth Street the avenue undergoes an 
abrupt change — no more fine doorways, no more 
grills, gardens, or churches; but instead, a barren 



220 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

skyscraper marks abruptly the line of demarca- 
tion, and opposite a vacancy with remnants of a 
handsome iron fence and garden extending beyond 
the boarded-up empty lot where once stood a pala- 
tial mansion, torn down, it is said, to save taxes. 
As first laid out. Fifth Avenue was one hundred 
feet wide, providing for a roadway of sixty feet 
and sidewalks of twenty, but in 1833 and 1844 
the city gave property owners permission to en- 
croach fifteen feet for steps, courtyards, and por- 
ticoes, of which we have so many ornamental 
examples all through the lower part of the avenue 
and the side streets that open from it. As traffic 
grew, congestion increased, and against the most 
emphatic protest from owners of private and busi- 
ness buildings in behalf of their handsome en- 
trances and areas, these were ordered removed in 
1908, and the street widened to its originally 
planned dimensions. For some beneficent reason 
this was not carried out below Thirteenth Street, 
where the difference in the width of the roadway 
may be noticed, but above this line the destruction 
to property by the ordinance was lamentable. One 
could quite understand a testy proprietor, upon 
receipt of a notice so disastrous to his property, 
tearing down the whole affronted edifice in pref- 
erence to spoiling his house, and there is so much 



WASHINGTON SQUARE 221 

temper displayed in the aspect of the demolition 
at Twelfth Street, that one likes to think this the 
explanation. 

Proprietors met this order as best they might, 
and took off their " encroachments " obediently, 
suppressing the pretty grass plots and hand- 
wrought iron fences and balconies; eliminating the 
characteristic " stoop " leading to the salon story, 
and, for the most part, making the entrance duck 
under the sidewalk into the former area door, and 
reconstructing that subterranean passage into a 
more adequate approach for the foot of quality. 
This accounts for the snubbed appearance of the 
fa9ades all the way up the avenue, where houses, 
shorn of their grace, stand flush with the building 
line, in uncompromising severity. 

The old Van Beuren house, standing isolated in 
its spacious garden in West Fourteenth Street, 
suffered a similar indignity, when that thorough- 
fare was widened and became the shopping centre 
of the city. This was the second mansion of the 
Spingler estate which adjoined the Brevoort farm 
and part of which is now covered by Union 
Square. Most of the property was inherited by 
Mary S. Van Beuren, Spingler's granddaughter. 
She built the brown-stone front house and lived 
there for years, raising flowers and vegetables in 



222 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the garden and keeping a cow and chickens. Ab- 
surd as this sounds in the heart of Fourteenth 
Street, there is nothing about the present aspect 
of the neglected garden to preclude the idea of a 
suburban farm, though the house has pretensions. 



XI 

GRAMERCY PARK 

Literary and historic memories crowd the 
quarter lying east of Union and Madison Squares, 
where many old landmarks stand in a fair state 
of preservation. Fortunately the neighborhood 
still commends itself to the domain of arts and 
letters, whose fraternity has established clubs in 
the grander houses, or " improved " modest dwell- 
ings along the lines of good taste, keeping to the 
original character. Nineteenth Street is an in- 
teresting example of what can be done to restore 
decaying neighbourhoods, its regeneration having 
been undertaken by Frederick Sterner, architect, 
some years back, with the result now so happily 
demonstrated. 

Rambles in the old quarter are attended by a 
confusion of sentiments in which, perhaps, in the 
presence of things changed so little while changed 
so much, a pervading tristesse is the dominant 
note. In so many cases all the shell of what was 
once so fine, so warm, so comfortable, is there — 



224 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

while the traditions, the personalities, are gone 
irrevocably. We must remember, in our wander- 
ings, that the old Boston Post Road opened this 
part of the island at an early date, so that the 
land hereabouts must have been considered very 
desirable for dwellings and farms, being along the 
central highway of the advancing city. Stujrre- 
sant Square and Gramercy Park were laid out 
at about the same time that Washington Square 
was developed as a place of fashionable residence; 
and, being private parks, after the style of Bed- 
ford and Russell Squares, in London, kept under 
lock and key, and dedicated exclusively to the uses 
of the property holders whose houses faced them, 
attracted the best class of tenants that New York, 
in those days, afforded. 

Stuyvesant Square, originally part of Peter 
Stuyvesant's houwerie, has been turned over to the 
proletariat, and the environment has suffered a 
gentle decadence, whose erstwhile dignity is still 
brooded over by the ponderous Church of St. 
George, standing high, dark, and imposing on the 
western side, dating from about 1845. The church 
contains an elaborate pulpit erected to the memory 
of J. Pierpont Morgan, who belonged to the parish 
for over fifty years, and was warden of the church 
from 1885 until his death, in 1913. William M. 



GRAMERCY PARK 225 

Chase's home stands on the south side of the 
square; he was buried from St. George's on 
October 27, 1916. 

Down in the old City Hall is preserved in the 
Governor's Room a beautiful portrait of James 
Duane, painted by John Trumbull, for the city, 
in 1805. This canvas shows the head and shoul- 
ders of a gentleman with long powdered hair, 
curling at the ends; the face is turned to the left 
and the keen, dark eyes look straight ahead. 
When James Duane was mayor of New York his 
country estate was a twenty-acre farm, lying along 
the Boston Post Road, and known as Gramercy 
Seat. Innes says that the name, Gramercy, was 
the English rendering of Krom merssche, or Krom 
moerasje, by which the Dutch indicated the 
" crooked little swamp " drained by Cedar Creek, 
which flowed from what is now IVIadison Square 
and emptied into the East River. Later the prop- 
erty came into the possession of Samuel Ruggles, 
and he, being keenly interested in the development 
of the city, presented this choice little spot of land, 
now known as Gramercy Park, in trust, to the 
sixty lot owners whose property faced it. Accord- 
ing to the deed, they were to surround the plot 
with an iron railing with ornamental gates, and 
by January, 1834, to lay out the grounds and plant 



226 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

trees. The tenants thus benefited were then to 
have access to the park for recreation, on payment 
of an annual fee of ten dollars. Since the destruc- 
tion of St. John's Park, this is the only private 
enclosure of the kind left in New York. It is 
still maintained by the tenants in the immediate 
vicinity. 

Gramercy Park, in its palmy days, was sur- 
rounded by the private dwellings of many notable 
people. The oldest house, facing the enclosure, is 
said to be that of the late James W. Gerard, an 
eminent lawyer of the last century, and active in 
pubhc affairs. Philip Hone's Diary speaks of 
him often, giving an intimate picture of a charm- 
ing and cultivated gentleman. Amongst other 
public services he secured the incorporation of the 
House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, in 
1824; and having accomplished that, devoted him- 
self to costuming the police or " watchmen " of 
the city, who up to this time wore no uniforms, 
and could only be identified by means of a small 
metal badge, worn under the lapel of the coat. 
Mr. Gerard wore the new uniform, which his per- 
sistency had caused to be adopted, at a fancy-dress 
ball given by Mrs. Coventry Waddell, of Mm'ray 
Hill, in the Italian villa where Thackeray was en- 
tertained. The Gerard house stands exteriorly 



GRAMERCY PARK 227 

intact on the south side of the square, joining the 
original habitation of the Players' Club, of which 
it is now part. 

The Players' Club House, the former residence 
of Valentine G. Hall, was purchased in 1888, by 
Edwin Booth, who remodelled and furnished it, 
and presented it to actors and friends of the drama 
as " The Players." Booth made his home at 
the Players' from the date of its opening until 
his death, which took place in this house, June 7, 
1893. Among the first directors of the club were 
Laurence Hutton, Edwin Booth, Lawrence Bar- 
rett, Brander Matthews, and Wilham Bispham. 

The club's miscellaneous collection of pictures 
includes three handsome portraits by Sargent — 
Booth, Barrett, and Joseph Jefferson. Booth is 
painted in the character of Henry IV, and it was 
Sargent's intention, as well as the wish of the club 
to preserve in the portrait of Jefferson a picture 
of that actor in his famous role. Rip Van Winkle. 
Jefferson posed in costume during a long and try- 
ing series of sittings, but the painter was never 
satisfied with the result. One day at luncheon 
both came in from a seance in an unusual state of 
nerves, and Mrs. Bartlett, who was present, tried 
to relieve Sargent's gloom by the suggestion that 
upon seeing the portrait again, with a fresh eye, 



228 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

he would agree with every one present in complete 
satisfaction with the result. Sargent turned to 
her and announced impressively: "I shall never 
see it again." There was an emphatic silence in 
which Jefferson realized the significance of this 
peculiar speech — that the painter had destroyed 
the product of their combined labours. *' Then," 
said he, " you will never see me like that again." 
True to his word he posed again only for the 
head, and this, owned by the Players, is a masterly 
Sargent. 

The fine example of Stuart owned by the 
Players is a portrait of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, 
an actor of note in the early nineteenth century, 
presented to the club by his granddaughter, ^Mrs. 
Louise Fairleigh Cooper. The mural paintings 
in the club are by Edward Simmons. 

The National Arts Club now occupies the for- 
mer residence of Samuel J. Tilden, adjoining 
the Players'. It is readily distinguished for its 
curious facade, added when Mr. Tilden bought 
the two houses, which it joins together. It is a 
refined example of what was considered the quin- 
tessence of elegance in those days, and was much 
admired for its sculptured front; everything about 
it — the style of its iron work, the rosettes in the 
ornament, the variations in colour, the bay win- 



GRAMERCY PARK 229 

dows, and the pointed doorway and windows — 
suggests the Centennial period of domestic archi- 
tecture, considered a vast improvement over the 
Georgian, which it succeeded and in this case re- 
placed. All the appointments of the interior were 
good and durable and on a handsome scale, for 
Mr. Tilden was a man of culture and wealth. 
When he died one of his bequests was $2,000,000 
to the New York Public Library, to which he 
added his library, consisting of 20,000 volumes. 

For thirteen years before he ran for President, 
Tilden was chairman of the Democratic State 
Committee of New York. Nominated for Presi- 
dent to succeed Grant, in 1876, he received a ma- 
jority of the popular vote, but, owing to the fact 
that the votes of several states were disputed, 
the electoral commission, consisting of senators, 
judges, and representatives, was appointed, and 
this commission divided on party lines and gave 
the disputed votes to Hayes. There seems to be 
but little doubt that Tilden was elected, but party 
feeling was so strong it was feared that, had 
he been sustained, another civil war would have 
resulted. 

The gardens in the rear of the Tilden house 
were the largest in the row, extending through the 
block to Nineteenth Street, and were charmingly; 



230 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

laid out with box-bordered walks and flower-beds, 
and shaded by large trees. When the National 
Arts Club took over the property their extensions 
covered the gardens, providing extensive gallery 
space for exhibitions, which form a useful part of 
the club's work. The permanent collection is 
composed of paintings and sculpture contributed 
by members. 

Stanford White lived on the opposite side of the 
square in the house now occupied by the Prince- 
ton Club. Vines and a hedge mitigate the severity 
of its Georgian style, that must, however, have 
been pleasing to an architect. 

Facetious New Yorkers dubbed the striped All 
Souls' Chm-ch, of Unitarian denomination, the 
Church of the Holy Zebra, when it first made its 
unusual appearance just off Gramercy Park. 
This was in the year 1854, long before New York 
had become accustomed to see planted, on her stern 
rock foundations, those exotics that now bloom 
so easily in the strong sea-hght of the island city. 
This medium Henry James, with great felicity of 
expression, compares in abundance to " some ample 
childless mother who consoles herself for her ste- 
rility by an unbridled course of adoption." The 
idea is very quaint and one seems to feel how loose 
a rein she gave herself in selecting, as her first 



GRAMERCY PARK 281 

adoptive infant, this very positive foreigner, this 
Basilica di San Gio Battista in Monza, this dis- 
tinct type of northern Italian architecture, the 
enthusiastic product of an ambitious architect, 
Jacob Wrey Mould. 

Jacob Wrey Mould was an Enghshman, poor 
fellow. Not "poor fellow" because he was 
English, but because nobody connected with the 
church, in those days, seems to have appreciated 
him, except the president of the trustees, Moses 
H. Grinnell, whom the pastor. Dr. Bellows, im- 
patiently considered " bewitched by the architect." 
By this we learn how earnest a partisan of the 
beautiful was this sterling old merchant of the 
last century. He alone had faith in the architect 
and his plan, and his method of meeting financial 
difficulties in the way of its construction was to 
put his hand into his own pocket, and postpone 
the pressm-e to a more convenient season for those 
upon whom it was ultimately to fall. By this 
means, and in spite of themselves, so to speak, 
the " most generous, ardent, and hopeful of men," 
as Dr. Bellows is constrained in justice to de- 
scribe him (though one can see he sorely tried 
the practical clergyman, intent upon housing the 
largest number of souls at the minimum expense), 
secured to the congregation a handsome edifice, 



232 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

and supported the ideals of an architect who was 
only too evidently a " character," who had all the 
human faihngs of his profession — the optimism, 
the pride in his creation, and the plausible esti- 
mates of expense. All of these the man of God 
resented; and all of these Moses Grinnell under- 
stood. We feel the reflection of her father's 
impatience in Miss Bellows' allusion to Mould 
as "what one might call a talented spendthrift. 
Peace be to his remains ! " But she found the 
church handsome and unique, though it excited 
much derisive comment and received many nick- 
names. " I thought the comphcated and some- 
what mysterious and inconvenient parsonage de- 
lightful," she tells us, "but" (laconically) "my 
mother did not/^ 

Caen stone and red brick laid alternately in 
horizontal courses followed the Italian model 
with an effect that no longer seems strange to 
us; but it shocked the city and the congregation. 
The latter felt the absurdity of their white 
elephant the more keenly when the final reckon- 
ing came and it was found that the architect had 
exceeded his contract for the church and parson- 
age by some $48,000; yet, notwithstanding this 
vmexpected drain upon its resources, the brave 
congregation voted the sum set aside for the 




RELIEF OF HENRY WHITNI-Y BKI.I.dWS, AM. SOULS CHURCJ 
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDKNS (PAGE 235) 



GRAMERCY PARK 233 

erection of the lofty campanile, that should have 
completed the replica of its Umbrian prototype, 
for the work of the United States Sanitary Com- 
mission, during the Civil War, of which its 
pastor, Hemy Whitney Bellows, was both 
founder and president. The church preserves 
elaborate drawings of both San Gio Battista and 
All Souls with the campanile as intended by the 
architect, a feature which added greatly to the 
effect of the ensemble. 

Dr. Bellows' immense vitality found vent in 
many directions for the public good. He be- 
longed to the epoch of pulpit oratory, and his 
extemporaneous speech was noted for its lucidity 
and style. He was a successful champion of lost 
causes and he made his pulpit the medium for 
influencing and moulding public opinion. His 
defence of the theatre, in which he appeared as 
a vindicator of the drama as a public necessity, 
had a wide, fruitful influence. It disabused many 
consciences of morbid and false sentiments, and 
it helped to put the drama on a new footing. 
When the Civil War broke out Dr. Bellows 
staked everything upon his belief in the church's 
duty to support the government with all its 
power, awaking in his congregation, by sheer 
force of eloquence, a state of imited and un- 



234 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

qualified loyalty that carried its members into the 
most important work in its history. 

Bellows' great enterprise, the Sanitary Com- 
mission, the precursor of the Red Cross Society, 
engrossed him throughout the war; twenty mil- 
lions of dollars in money or stores passed through 
his hands; his associates served on over six hun- 
dred battlefields, including skirmishes, and in- 
numerable hospitals, camps, and soldiers' homes. 
Besides this the commission collected and paid 
over twelve million dollars' worth of soldiers' 
claims, otherwise irrevocable. Eighteen years 
after the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Bellows 
made over the archives of his work to the Astor 
Library, to be handed down in memory of the 
largest voluntary charity in history for the use 
of future generations. 

Dr. Bellows remained pastor of AU Souls' for 
forty-three years, but notwithstanding his long 
service and his full record of activity he died 
a comparatively young man, not having attained 
his sixty-eighth year. Four years after his death 
his congregation erected the intensely virile por- 
trait by Augustus Saint Gaudens, placed in the 
church in June, 1886. 

Unfortunately hedged in and deprived of day- 
light, the interior can be seen only inadequately. 



GRAMERCY PARK 235 

and, except during service, through the com- 
plaisance of the most efficient coloured sexton. 
One enters through Dr. Bellows' house, now 
transformed into a church house and a hive of 
useful activities. One is often surprised, in a 
heartless metropolis, at the individual attention, 
almost provincial in its kindness and thorough- 
ness, with which a stranger is sometimes re- 
ceived, especially when externals are forbidding. 
All Souls' Church looks, on the week-day, neg- 
lected and shabby. Its stone work is scaling off, 
its garden is overgrown, and its gates padlocked 
and rusty. One hesitates to seek admittance, even 
in quest of Saint Gaudens' matchless relief of the 
former pastor, the chef d'oeuvre of its interior. 
But at the church house one is received with 
genial hospitality, and informed, piloted, person- 
ally conducted, and illuminated by one of the 
best qualified custodians of the many churches 
visited in one's rounds of New York; and were 
this a Baedecker, I should double star that 
amiable sexton of All Souls' Church, as guide, 
philosopher, and friend. 

The memorial to Dr. Bellows, placed to the 
left of the pulpit, is in the form of a life-size, 
full-length figure, in comparatively high relief, 
against a lettered and delicately decorated back- 



236 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

ground. The subject, dressed in ample official 
robes, stands, presenting a three-quarter view to 
the spectator. Renaissance ornament surrounds 
the bronze tablet, of which the whole arrange- 
ment is perhaps the most eloquent example of 
Saint Gaudens' great professional prowess not 
only as technician, though that is indeed supreme 
in this monument, but as psychologist, revealing 
with unusual fluency the character, the force, the 
style, the ensemble of a man, great in a very 
special field of action. 

The neighbourhood is rich hereabout in ghosts 
of faded memories for those who have courage 
for the disillusion that each and every identified 
home of cherished literary memory presents. If 
Washington Irving's house — poor derelict — seems 
desoriente, distracted, in its abandonment on the 
ragged edge of skyscraping invasion, how much 
less suggestive of belles lettres is that dismal 
apartment house, " remodelled on the French 
plan," pointed out as Bayard Taylor's resi- 
dence; or the Carey sisters' home, or the house 
where Horace Greeley lived! If Henry James 
felt the melancholy check and snub to the fehci- 
ties of his backward reach " in the presence, so to 
speak, of the rudely, the ruthlessly suppressed 
birth house " in Washington Square, what are we 



GRAMERCY PARK 237 

to suppose must be Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's 
emotions when he regards that terrible travesty 
in Twentieth Street, its entire face opened to 
the vulgar gaze, its discreet brown-stone features 
annihilated by the flagrant burst of plate glass 
from loft to basement, across which reads the 
lurid inscription — " Theodore Roosevelt was born 
in this house." 

In still another of the transverse thorough- 
fares a to-let sign is the only distinguishing in- 
signia of the once charming abode of William 
Cullen Bryant, while the Cruger Mansion, the 
birthplace of the Metropolitan Museum, is now 
levelled to the democratic uses of the Salvation 
Army. 

Assuredly oblivion is better than this. 



XII 

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 

In its present state of stupid decadence it is 
hard, even for one who knew it in its prime, to 
visuahze Union Square as it was not more than 
a quarter of a century ago, the very acme of 
fashionable shopping districts for the wealthy 
residents of Fifth Avenue, whose homes are now 
obhterated by the prevailing " loft " buildings 
from Twelfth Street to Madison Square. "In 
those days" the shopper left Fifth Avenue at 
Madison Square and followed Broadway to the 
cluster of big shops that faced the square or 
lined its approach. The atmosphere of the place 
was gay and charming, somewhat after the 
fashion of Tremont Street in Boston, which 
gains colour and vivacity from the Common. So 
Union Square, with its green grass, its fountain 
playing in the centre, its equestrian statue of 
Washington, and its horses and carriages stand- 
ing before fine shops, had distinctly an air. At 
night, too, during the season, the place was ani- 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 239 

mated, for the Academy of Music at Fourteenth 
Street and Irving Place was the opera house, and 
Wallack's Theatre stood just below the square, 
on Broadway. 

Tiffany moved to Union Square from Broome 
Street in 1870, remaining until 1905, when that 
shop was again a pioneer in the movement which 
carried the exclusive trade into the upper reaches 
of Fifth Avenue. The publishing houses of 
Schirmer and Ditson were installed here during 
these palmy days, and the Gorham Company, 
Vantine's, and many of the better class depart- 
ment stores were located in Broadway beyond 
the square. Rounding "Dead Man's Curve," 
which led into the deep mysteries of the " way 
downtown " section of Broadway, was one of 
the adventures of surface travel, when the cable 
road was built. The cars used to take the double 
curve from the west side of Union Square into 
Broadway at full speed, on the theory that it 
was impossible to let go and grip the cable again 
while the car was on the curve. This, for a long 
time, the authorities believed, and the innumer- 
able resulting accidents were supposed to be un- 
avoidable and gave rise to the lugubrious title. 

Some patching in the city plan is felt at Union 
Square. In colonial days the Bowery followed 



240 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the present line of Fourth Avenue from Fourth 
Street to Union Square, where it turned, in 
passing the space now devoted to the park, and 
pursued a course due north. From this turn, 
at about Seventeenth Street, it was called the 
Bloomingdale Road, since its objective point was 
the old Dutch hamlet of Bloemendaal — famous 
for its horticultural nurseries — not far from 
Haarlem. Here were farms and country seats 
of wealthy citizens, overlooking the Hudson. 
When Broadway was developed from Hendrick 
Brevoort's house, it was bent to the left so as to 
connect with the old Bloomingdale Road, now 
upper Broadway. 

When the Croton Reservoir was built, in 1842, 
on the site now occupied by the Public Library, 
one of its first extravagances was to supply the 
fountain in Union Square with water. This was 
the first attempt to beautify the square, which the 
grudging commissioners had left merely because 
so many streets intersected at this point that 
it seemed the simplest solution of the tangle. 

The majestic equestrian statue of Washington 
that so superbly dominates Union Square was a 
gift to the city from its merchants, the fund being 
raised by subscriptions of four hundred dollars 
each, through the earnest efforts of Colonel Lee. 




EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF WASHIXGTON, UXIOX SQUARE 
HENRY KIRKE BROWN, SCULPTOR (PAGE 242) 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 24.1 

Horatio Greenough, oui- first professional sculp- 
tor, he who made the classic marble of Washing- 
ton for the Capitol, projected the scheme of this 
equestrian statue and was to have undertaken the 
work with Henry Kirke Brown, but after having 
done much to arouse enthusiasm and promote 
subscriptions, finally abandoned the enterprise. 

Considered a great achievement in its day, and 
the first equestrian to be erected in New York 
since the destruction of the statue of George III, 
in Bowhng Green, it still remains one of the best 
in the country. One other, only, is older, that 
of Jackson, by Clark Mills, which stands before 
the White House in Washington, finished in 
1853. 

Greenough was a confirmed classicist, having, 
under the tutelage of Thorwaldsen, alhed himself 
with the classic revival in sculpture in Italy. Had 
he carried out the statue, he would surely have 
made our American hero look like Caesar, Marcus 
AureHus, or Apollo Belvidere, as was the custom 
in his world of ideality. But Kirke Brown was 
of different stuff, and his work was an important 
development of what had remained to his day 
an alien art. He was in reality the first American 
sculptor, the first, that is to say, to express some- 
thing essentially national, and he owed less to 



242 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Europe than did any of his predecessors and 
colleagues who modelled figures. 

He began his career as a portrait painter, 
studying in Boston under Chester Harding at 
the age of eighteen, but soon gave up painting 
for sculpture, keeping himself by means of tire- 
less industry, yet unable to reach Europe, with- 
out which no artist then hoped to attain dis- 
tinction, until 1842, when he was thirty-eight 
years of age. During his four years in Italy he 
made the marble statuettes and rehefs expected 
of sculptors at that time, but he did not fit into 
the environment of the old world, and they could 
not make a classicist of him. Upon his return to 
the United States he vindicated his independence 
by making a series of studies of Indians, and later 
received commissions for a large bas-relief for 
the Church of the Annunciation in New York, 
and a statue of De Witt Clinton for Greenwood 
Cemetery, where stands also his " Angel of the 
Resurrection." His studio was in the old Ro- 
tunda in Broadway, the first home of the National 
Academy. Brown established a miniature bronze 
foundry there and cast many of his smaller works 
in metal. 

The equestrian statue of Washington marks 
the spot where the citizens met the Commander- 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 243 

in-Chief of the army when he reentered the city- 
after the British evacuation, November 25, 1783. 
Washington, Tuckerman tells us, is represented 
"in the act of calling his troops to repose; the 
figure is bareheaded, the hat resting on his bridle 
arm, the sword sheathed, the right hand extended 
as if commanding quiet; the drapery is the simple 
Continental uniform."* 

The silhouette of the group is compact, its total 
mass in dignified relation to the simple pedestal. 
The horse is large and spirited; the rider com- 
manding, his control of his mount revealing the 
character of the man in whom we feel essentially 
the leader, while his noble gesture conjures the 
vision of the army of patriots to whom it speaks. 
The statue has serene dignity, composure, equi- 
librium — the attributes of great art. Commenced 
in February, 1853, it was finished and inaugur- 
ated, with impressive ceremonies, on the eightieth 
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 
July 4, 1856. 

Kirke Brown, like Verrocchio, has been called 
a man of one masterpiece; and if the equestrian 
statue of the condottiere, Bartolomeo Colleoni, in 
the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice, has 
remained, with the famous Gattamelata, of Dona- 

* "Book of the Artists," p. 575. 



244 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

tello, the type of such things for the sculptors 
of succeeding generations, this noble conception 
of Washington has more than held its place in 
the annals of American sculpture, in whose re- 
shaping Kirke Brown was a strong force. He 
and Clark Mills, indeed, were pioneers in the re- 
action against the classic revival, which under 
Thorwaldsen and Canova had spread its mere- 
tricious influence throughout the civihzed world. 
Brown boldly rejected the lifeless tradition, and, 
especially through his pupil, John Quincy Adams 
Ward, who assisted in the making of the statue 
of Washington, fathered an American school of 
sculpture that stood for the honest representation 
of things as they are. These old fellows, with all 
their faults, directed at least a movement towards 
something American and related to their time. 
Ward, who was brought up in Brown's studio, 
broke thoroughly free, and during his long and 
honourable life was a tremendous influence in that 
first national movement. 

Ward's vitality in resisting the condition of art 
in Italy, to which he, of course, went in due 
course, was a veritable stemming of the tide; and 
his words, preserved in that charming and just 
appreciation of the sculptor written by Mrs. 
Herbert Adams, express the profundity of his 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 245 

convictions. " ' A cursed atmosphere,' cries Ward. 
' The magnetism of the antique statues is so 
strong that it draws a sculptor's manhood out 
of him. A modern man has modern themes to 
deal with; and if art is a living thing, a serious, 
earnest thing, fresh from a man's soul, he must 
live in that of which he treats — an American 
sculptor will serve himself and his age best by 
working at home.' " 

We have seen how straightforward was Ward's 
dealing with the great Washington, before the 
Sub-Treasury; with the Greeley statue in City 
Hall Park; and we shall see later before the 
Brooklyn Borough Hall, his most uncompromis- 
ing portrait of Henry Ward Beecher, so ugly 
in its fidelity to fact, so little subtle in the 
expression of those extraneous figures that en- 
cumber its base. But the value of these rugged, 
basic truths, even when unpalatable, is not to be 
disparaged. 

Ward had a fund of human interest and 
psychology, but little sculptural feeling. After 
him came Saint Gaudens, who added to the elder 
sculptor's qualities the inestimable attribute of 
beauty. The three pioneers — Mills, Brown, and 
Ward — had paved the way for distinguished 
American expression, opened the door for Saint 



246 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Gaudens who arrived with the general awakening 
that followed the Centennial, when Paris, not 
Rome, became the objective point of students and 
the French-trained sculptor rose into prominence 
and dominated the field of vision. Saint Gaudens 
was " finished," so to speak, in the Beaux Arts, 
but he was primarily a product of Ward's atelier, 
so that he relates directly to our movement, of 
which he was, in his day, the ultimate flower. 
The sculptors that follow in his train have lost 
the old basic foundation of those American 
pioneers and their work without it becomes 
meaningless and empty. This condition has 
developed the portrait statue, as we know it 
to-day, in all its monumental stupidity — the 
demand for which has practically killed sculpture 
in this country, so far as the national movement 
is concerned. 

And with that decline came also the Teutonic 
invasion of the field, an influence now predom- 
inant with us. The Germans, in their monu- 
mental and applied sculpture, generally speaking, 
went back to the old neo-Greek, and were a 
factor in the commercialization of sculpture under 
which baleful influence we are now suffering. 
How the case stands may be appreciated by a 
glance at the membership list of the National 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 247 

Sculpture Society, which shows that body to be 
largely composed of foreign-born artists. 

With the exception of Clark Mills, who is not 
represented in the city, New York furnishes a 
field for the study of the development of sculp- 
ture in America to any one sufficiently interested 
to look it up. To study Canova we shall have 
to penetrate a private collection — Senator Clark 
owns an example; Thorwaldsen, the Danish 
classicist, is represented at an upper entrance of 
Central Park, with a life-sized portrait statue of 
himself; Central Park abounds in the most pain- 
ful pre-Centennial conceptions of sculpture, that 
show the wearing away of the Italian influence, 
with nothing vital to replace it. " The Falconer," 
by George Simonds, a sculptor who resided in 
Rome, is a typical example of this vapid period, 
for which undoubtedly Hiram Powers' " Greek 
Slave," shown at the Crystal Palace exposition, 
in 1853, set the public taste, for it was fondly 
believed to be the greatest work of sculpture 
known to history. One can realize how far we 
have come since our first world's fair, when we 
learn that some time during the famous domina- 
tion of the Tweed Ring in New York one of 
their aesthetic measures was to paint all the bronze 
statues in Central Park white, to simulate marble. 



248 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

This was at about the time of the Centennial, or 
just prior to it. 

The statue of the youthful Lafayette, by 
Bartholdi, which stands at the head of Broadway 
in Union Square, shows the decline of classic 
influence, still, however, quite apparent in the 
use of the toga, thrown across the shoulder of the 
figure to give sculptural mass. This is interest- 
ing as showing how difficult it was for sculptors 
of his period to give up dependence on the Roman 
models. Lafayette wears his drapery, over his 
eighteenth century uniform, very much as Ger- 
manicus wore his in the famous classic statue 
of that hero. 

Nor need one leave Union Square to look into 
the matter of German influence, for here we 
have a notorious example of the native product — 
the small bronze fountain by Adolf Donndorf, of 
Stuttgart, a gift to the city, in 1881. As for the 
neo-Greek sculpture by our foreign-born residents, 
that is rife about the lower part of the city in 
the neighbourhood of City Hall Park, especially 
some caryatides in that vicinity, some groups on 
the municipal buildings, the portrait statues of 
Franklin and Gutenberg in front of the Staats 
Zeitung Building, and the Franklin by Plassman 
in Printing House Square. Union and Madison 




THE FARRAGUT STATUE, BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDEXS 
PEDESTAL DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE 
MADISON SQUARE (PAGE 249) 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 249 

Squares and Central Park furnish prolific 
examples of the stupid portrait statue that grew 
out of the decadence of classic influence; while 
with the later period of commercial portrait we 
are only too well supplied. 

Two years after the general awakening of 1876 
came the important commissions for the statues 
of Admiral Farragut and Robert Randall; and 
here we have proof of Ward's large-mindedness, 
for it was he who decided a committee, wavering 
between the ehgibility of himself and Saint 
Gaudens, who had just come back from Paris, 
for the monument to Farragut. " Give the young 
man a chance," said Ward; and the commission 
was passed to Saint Gaudens. 

The Farragut statue, unveiled in 1881, on the 
Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square, marked 
again a departure in sculpture in this country, 
and had the advantage of the collaboration of a 
distinguished architect in the design of the exedra 
upon which the standing figure of the admiral is 
so handsomely mounted. Saint Gaudens executed 
the figure in Paris, showing it in the salon of 
1880. When he returned to New York, he spent 
much time with Stanford White in designing and 
perfecting the pedestal, which was so to modify 
and amphfy the civic traditions on this important 



250 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

subject. This was not effected without the 
demolition of some of the city's cherished rules, 
for New York had enacted a labour-saving regu- 
lation that all pedestals should follow a uniform 
design; and this proved so much of an obstacle 
that at one time Saint Gaudens threatened to 
withdraw his figure unless the pedestal should be 
" permitted " as designed. In the end, of course, 
the sculptor and architect prevailed, with the 
result here so happily displayed. The ceremony 
of unveiling was made a great occasion, and with 
it Saint Gaudens stepped into the high place in 
American sculpture, which he occupied with in- 
creasing honour until his death, in 1907. 

The statue of Farragut was made when the 
sculptor was thirty years old. Upon it the base 
of Saint Gaudens' great reputation rests; and 
while in New York its merits are often balanced 
with those of the Sherman equestrian group, at 
the entrance to Central Park; the Peter Cooper, 
in Cooper Square; and the relief of Dr. Bellows, 
in the All Souls' Church — all later works — it has 
never had to yield precedence to any, but holds its 
own by force of its splendid vigor and youthful 
plasticity. It has the essential characteristics of 
the portrait but so combined with the attitude of 
the artist that the figm-e stands as much more 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 251 

than a portrait, having in it something more 
living, more typical, deeper than the mere out- 
ward mould of the man. Saint Gaudens' Farra- 
gut has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on 
his two legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He 
is rough and bluff with the courage and sim- 
plicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to 
deal with horizons, while the features are clean- 
cut and masterful. The inscription is happy: 
" That the memory of a daring and sagacious 
commander and gentle great-souled man, whose 
life from childhood was given to his country, but 
who served her supremely in the war for the 
Union, 1861-1865, may be preserved and hon- 
oured; and that they who come after him and 
who will love him so much may see him as he 
was seen by friend and foe, his countrymen have 
set up this monument A.D. MDCCCLXXXI." 
The pedestal, like which nothing had been seen 
in this country, was much discussed at the time 
of its erection, and became the prototype of the 
numerous exedras which followed throughout the 
country. Richard Watson Gilder eulogized it 
sympathetically in his magazine,* and no one 
ever seemed to suggest that its cleverness was 
just a little in excess of its depth, or that the 

* Scribners, June, 1881. 



252 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

suave lines of those conventional females, personi- 
fying Courage and Patriotism, were a bit weak 
and inept as companions to the man who took 
the fleet past the forts in Mobile Bay; so that 
the monument always seems to me to separate 
into two parts — one very strong, the other very 
beautiful, between which there is no coherent 
sympathy, but a very certain ambiguity. 

These ladies belong clearly to the same 
family as those, more fortunately placed by Stan- 
ford White, on the Gorham Building, further 
up the avenue, and felicitously sculptured by 
Andrew O'Connor. To the trade of the silver- 
smith, in its highest expression, they do most 
admirably belong, and the pendentives on this 
building, which Mr. Arnold Bennett brought 
into agreeable prominence by his unstinted praise 
of its cornice — the finest in New York, he called 
it — are one of the pleasures of the ride up the 
avenue. 

Saint Gaudens and White again collaborated 
on the graceful tower of the Madison Square 
Garden, modelled on that of the Giralda, at 
Seville. The gilded Diana, which surmounts the 
whole, is another early work of the sculptor of 
the Farragut monument, a finial figure, inspired 
by Houdon's " Diana of the Louvre." Her fate 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 253 

hangs in the balance, with that of the building 
over which she is poised; for the building has an 
unforgivable fault — it never " paid J" And just 
for that " they " say it has got to come down, 
and the beautiful golden Diana is to be sold at 
auction to the highest bidder. Before this book 
is published its destiny may be decided, but none 
can foretell it now. The best that it can wildly 
hope is a refuge in a museum, where, denied its 
setting, robbed of its associations, its day will 
be done. 

Both the Farragut statue and the pleasure 
house, erected ten years later, have been thrust 
out of scale by the heavy intrusion of office 
buildings on the east side: yet the Farragut holds 
by its integral weight as a work of art, and the 
Madison Square Garden remains an imposing 
monument to the genius of its architect. Old 
prints of New York show how these two kindred 
works used to sound the note of the square, a note 
now brazenly taken for modernity by the bump- 
tious Metropolitan Tower, whose ugly bulk 
quashed the pretty charm of the fine trees and 
fountain, putting the very sky out of scale, and, 
as a last word in impertinence, claiming derivation 
from — oh shade of St. Marks! — the Campanile of 
Venice. 



254 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

The Tower replaces the first site of the Madi- 
son Square Presbyterian Church, which gradually 
became enclosed by the encroaching Metropolitan 
Life Insurance Building. On the opposite corner 
stood, until not more than ten years ago, the Cath- 
arine Lorillard Wolfe mansion, a fine old brown- 
stone dwelling, and one of the landmarks of the 
square, once an exclusive residential neighbour- 
hood. When this house came upon the market 
it was bought by John R. Hegeman, of the Metro- 
politan Company, ostensibly for his own use. 
After holding it for a time, Mr. Hegeman, speak- 
ing for the company, offered to exchange the 
Wolfe house and lot, valued at about $700,000, 
for the site of Dr. Parkhurst's Church, the lots 
being of equal size and value, and, to make the 
offer more attractive to the trustees and congre- 
gation, to " throw in " an extra $300,000 for good 
measure. 

This apparently handsome oflPer the church 
accepted. Nothing had been said about the char- 
acter of the structure that was to replace the 
original church, and which now sinks it into a well 
of darkness. Although the new church was dedi- 
cated only ten years ago (1907) it was not 
thought necessary to pursue a fleeing congre- 
gation into the outskirts of the city. The church 




INTERIOR MADISON SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
LOUIS C. TIFFANY AND STANFORD WHITE (pAGE 256) 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 255 

was called " The Madison Square Presbyterian 
Church," and the trustees had no wish to destroy 
the significance of that honourable title. So set 
were they upon remaining in their original locality, 
that when an endowment fund was subscribed for 
the maintenance of the church, it was stipulated 
that the foundation was to be available only during 
such time as the church should occupy its present 
location, after which, supposing it was ever found 
expedient to move in spite of the conditions, the 
fund should be forfeit and the amount paid over to 
the Presbyterian Hospital. 

With all these details understood the manage- 
ment set about the construction of an edifice that 
should compare with the most beautiful churches 
of New York. Stanford White was the archi- 
tect. His tragic death occurred the year before 
the church was ready for occupancy, and it rep- 
resents therefore the last important work of New 
York's most noted architect. White conceived it 
as a Roman basilica. The exterior is exceedingly 
beautiful, executed in grey brick, throughout 
which is repeated, in the manner of a diaper 
pattern, the Maltese Cross, giving variety and 
interest to the surface. The porch is supported 
by exquisite pillars of polished granite. 

White never stopped short of the best. His 



256 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

buildings were modelled after the noblest types; 
their details were executed by the ablest talent 
that the country afforded. The effective white 
figures on the blue enamel of the pediment, which 
gives colour to the fa9ade, were designed by 
H. Siddons Mowbray and executed by him 
in combination with the sculptor, Adolph 
Weinman. 

The interior follows the spirit of the Mosque 
of Santa Sophia, in Constantinople, the greatest 
achievement of its style, the most satisfactory of 
all domed interiors. In its elaboration the archi- 
tect collaborated with Louis Tiffany, who lent 
himself to the task with the more ardour, perhaps, 
because the Tiffany family belonged to this 
church. The general tone of the colour scheme 
is gold, to which the enriched dome and the 
ornamental chancel organs contribute the positive 
notes, while the interior is, perhaps, most notably 
a monumental example of the Tiffany favrile 
glass, in whose happy use the building has no 
rival. 

The church gets little or no daylight, and the 
effect of the iridescent windows, executed in this 
beautiful substance, simulates hght in an extraor- 
dinary way. The light which appears to come 
through them is really the reflection of the light 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 257 

thrown upon them from the many electroliers, 
themselves marvels of originahty. The central 
designs of the windows, representing biblical 
subjects, in circles, are surrounded by smaller 
circles enclosing symbols of the seasons, done in 
leaded glass, the whole idea being unique both in 
conception and in execution. 

The chancel wall presents in one continuous 
block of lettering the Ten Commandments, done 
in the favrile glass on a white mosaic background. 
The effect suggests mother-of-pearl, and is ex- 
tremely delicate and refined, as indeed are all the 
embellishments of the interior, about which there 
is nothing ostentatious. The surfaces are richly 
wrought with endless detail, but with such discre- 
tion that the interior seems to draw upon an inex- 
haustible source of beauty, which the eye dis- 
covers little by little, sounding new depths at each 
renewed vision. 

Hopkinson Smith has spoken of Madison 
Square in the spring as a "mosaic of light and 
shade." * It made, in its day, its wide appeal to 
artists, and so we have ample record of its for- 
mer brilliancy and charm. Its name in those 
days seemed to evoke, more than any other fre- 
quented spot, the physical semblance of the city, 

♦"Charcoals of New York," F. Hopkinson Smith. 



258 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the picture of gaiety and sunshine, of freedom 
and fresh air, of chic coupes drawn by spanking 
teams of glossy horses, of breezy pedestrians 
taking with pleasure the sprint across the square, 
itself the merry playground of happy children, 
the resting-spot of nounous and sleeping, lace- 
frilled babies. 

It was James Harper, of the distinguished firm 
of pubhshers, whose influence preserved, beauti- 
fied, and increased the pubhc lands originally 
planned and used as a " Parade Ground." The 
park was opened during his administration as 
mayor of New York, in 1844. He also stimu- 
lated the purchase of additional territory, closed 
the old Boston Post Road, whose bed is indicated 
by the double row of trees leading from the foun- 
tain north, and ordered Fifth Avenue filled in 
and regulated from Twenty-third to Twenty- 
eighth Streets. The potter's field, established 
here, in 1794, had been banished to Washington 
Square after a short tenure, being considered an 
eyesore on the popular afternoon drive — the four- 
teen miles around, as Washington called it, cov- 
ered by following the Bloomingdale Road to 
Harlem Heights, and returning along the Boston 
Post Road. 

The Fifth Avenue Hotel, at Twenty-third 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 259 

Street and Fifth Avenue, replaced the ancient 
road-house kept by Corporal Thompson, and 
known, in coaching days, as the Madison Cottage. 
The hotel, built in 1858, was a six-story structure 
of white marble, containing every then known 
luxury, including the first passenger elevator — 
called a " vertical railroad." 

The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, was 
entertained here on his visit to this country, in 
1860; the Emperor Dom Pedro, of Brazil, and 
the Empress stayed at the hotel in 1876; and 
Presidents Lincobi and Grant were among the 
celebrated guests. General William T. Sherman, 
William J. Florence, the actor, and ex- Senator 
Thomas C. Piatt, the republican boss, made their 
homes here. The Fifth Avenue Hotel remained 
a feature of the avenue for fifty years, when it 
was torn down to make way for the Fifth Avenue 
Building, which now marks this historic site. 

Madison Square has suffered more than most 
public places in New York from misguided efforts 
at embellishment. The portrait statue of Gov- 
ernor Seward, by Randolph Rogers, of Rogers' 
group fame, is only interesting as showing the 
state of mind towards sculpture just prior to the 
Centennial. It had, to the American critic of 
its period, the inestimable advantage of having 



260 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

been made in Rome, though not indeed as a 
portrait of Governor Seward. A certain am- 
biguity of character, in the long, loosely hung 
limbs and bony frame, substantiates the current 
scandal that Rogers modelled it as a portrait of 
Lincoln and, failing to dispose of it under that 
guise, made a new head and sold it as Seward. 
Its hard, dry academicism presents all the stu- 
pidity of its epoch. Bissell's Chester A. Arthur 
and Ward's Roscoe Conkling were given to the 
city about twenty years later; while still later a 
flood of mediocre sculpture was let loose upon the 
over-decorated building of the Appellate Court, 
on the east side of the square. 

The Appellate Court House, designed by James 
Brown Lord, architect, was completed in 1900, 
and represents a new departure in municipal 
buildings. It has the great misfortune to have 
been erected on an L-shaped plot of ground, 
alongside of which fronted Twenty-fifth Street, 
so that the main fa9ade was obliged to face that 
narrow street, while only an end is visible from 
the square, whence its features might be sup- 
posed to have gained by an effective approach. 
The absence of any sort of setting for so formid- 
able an array of personalities as those presented 
by the sky-line of statues merely, to say nothing 




Copvruiht hx Hciiv Uiii'i-r IValkc 
Copley Print Copyright, 1899, by Curtis and Camera 



DECORATIVE PANEL, WISDOM/ BY HENRY OLIVER W^ALKER 
APPELLATE COURT HOUSE, MADISON SQUARE (PAGE 264) 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 261 

of the more pregnant symbolic groups of this 
exorbitant structure, seems to express the high 
pitch of competition reached in this central cur- 
rent of desirability. 

No less than sixteen sculptors were in the con- 
spiracy to make the Appellate Court House com- 
mit this unpardonable breach of reticence; to 
announce from its own house top the intellectual 
sources of its legal precedent, claiming derivation, 
it is to be supposed, from those ten law-givers of 
antiquity, carved as finials to the main uprights 
of the building itself; standing upon those tried 
and sound virtues — Wisdom and Justice, — or 
assertively proud of its Force and of the inevi- 
table Triumph of Law over Anarchy, with its 
resultant Peace. Morning, Noon, Evening, and 
Night, and throughout the Seasons, it is alle- 
gorically put to us, will these conscious virtues 
operate for eternal good, until the mighty hand 
of civic progress shall come along and sweep the 
whole florid structure into the dust. 

There was once a genial and delightful member 
of a shabby, Bohemian club in Philadelphia, where 
camaraderie was cherished to the exclusion of the 
minor qualities of law and order and so-called 
good behaviour. In good time the club prospered, 
and feeling the weight of its purse, moved out of 



262 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

its hospitable attic into a house of its own. With 
this removal came new responsibilities, and house 
committees began to take themselves and their 
duties seriously, so that finally a hostile sort of 
discipline crept into the little club, and this the 
older members, and those of the younger set 
with the cult for camaraderie, resented with whim- 
sical bitterness, like naughty children under the 
rule of a conscientious stepmother. The genial 
and delightful member was one of these, and, sad 
to relate, he clung to his Bohemian proclivities, 
and distressed his stepmother house committee 
by feats of drunkenness in which he reverted com- 
pletely to his type and seemed to think himself 
still a member of that attic club of shameful mem- 
ory. Finally he was expelled. Not only had he, 
when confused by wine, poured libations into the 
grand piano; it was cited, as the culmination of 
his depredations, that once the sight of a neat and 
orderly row of bottles and glasses ranged upon a 
classic mantelpiece had so enraged him that with 
one sweep of his strong right arm he cleared the 
shelf, scattering destruction in his path. If some 
benign giant Bacchus could but, in a state of 
super-intoxication, with a mighty gesture sweep 
the offending impedimenta from the roof of the 
Appellate Court, where Manu, Mohanmied, Zoro- 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 263 

aster, Confucius, and the others are ranged with 
maddening neatness, what a rehef it would be to 
brain and eyes. 

If in its outer surfaces the Appellate Court 
protests too much, from the iconoclastic point of 
view, so also the richly embellished interior seems 
to " overdo " the symbohc, to have dragged all 
the rivers of learning and power that no minute 
particle of wisdom be left unexploited in this 
verbose statement of authority. The psychologi- 
cal effect of such magnificent courts upon the 
simple offender was not lost upon so subtle an 
observer as Mr. Anatole France; and one can 
understand another Crinquebille awed by the 
luxury of this one, and even flattered by an 
unjust sentence coming from august beings in- 
spired by such dreams of classic equity. 

The handsome frieze, which ornaments the Main 
Hall, holds together well in colour, though painted 
by three artists with different ideas — Henry Sid- 
dons Mowbray, Robert Reid, and Willard L. 
Metcalf. This frieze, in bright colours, in the 
illuminated style, harmonizes excellently with the 
handsome onyx walls. On entering, Mr. Mow- 
bray's section is opposite, Mr. Reid's to the right, 
Mr. Metcalf's to the left and carried over to the 
entrance wall, where also, between the doors, are 



264 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

two lunettes by Charles Yardley Turner. The 
series by Mr. Mowbray, representing the Trans- 
mission of the Law, is conceived in the best deco- 
rative spirit. A formal winged figure, repeated 
from space to space, carrying a scroll, hnks the 
groups together; and these intermediate groups 
form an historical sequence of law-givers, from 
Moses to the Greeks; from the Romans onward 
to the Common Law of England and down to 
the black-robed judges of to-day. 

Reid's decoration, neither realistic in treatment 
nor flat and decorative, is beautiful in colour, with 
blue predominating; while Metcalf has seen his 
problem more in the light of easel pictures, in 
which the symbolism is ineffective and obscure. 

The three panels, for which the court-house is 
famed, are in the Court Room, an ornate chamber, 
opening off the Main Hall. These panels by 
Edward Simmons, Henry Oliver Walker, and 
Edwin Howland Blashfield, three of our most 
eminent mural painters, are the feature of the 
Appellate Court, and bring it at once into the 
class of those more consistently conceived struc- 
tures, with which it was contemporary, the Boston 
Pubhc Library and the Library of Congress. 

At this time, between 1888 and 1897, following 
the admirable lead of the French nation, which 



UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 265 

had secured in the decorations of the Hotel de 
Ville and the Petit Palais, in Paris, as well as in 
the Pantheon, and other municipal buildings, ex- 
amples of the work of all of its great living paint- 
ers, the feehng had become strong here that 
American artists should be represented in the 
public buildings of our cities, and the whole ques- 
tion of mural painting became the live issue that 
it is to-day. If Boston was more fastidious in her 
choice of painters and sculptors, Washington laid 
special unction to her soul in the fact that all the 
artists commissioned by the government were both 
native and resident. 

In conforming to a practice so salutary to the 
cause of American art, the intention of the Appel- 
late Court cannot be too highly respected. It 
secured the work of many artists towards its em- 
bellishment. Certainly the painters of the Court 
Room panels attacked the work in the right spirit, 
and have collaborated with much success. 

To the right and left of the three central pic- 
tures are the seals of the State and City of New 
York, by George Willoughby Maynard, and the 
remaining panels are the work of Kenyon Cox 
and Joseph Lauber. 



XIII 

MURRAY HILL 

Caprice has settled, for the moment, our shift- 
ing centre of seething, whirhng, metropolitan ac- 
tivity upon the summit of Murray Hill, sweep- 
ing, hurtling, before the advancing march of trade, 
the older residence quarter, now as buried and for- 
gotten and inconceivable as the cornfield where 
Washington tried to rally his troops, on Robert 
Murray's farm, somewhere between the sites of the 
Grand Central Station and Bryant Park. At 
the manor house of Incleberg, the Murray estate, 
which stood near the present intersection of Park 
Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street, Mrs. Murray 
entertained General Howe and the British offi- 
cers so hospitably, with her fine old Madeira, that 
Washington and Putnam were given time to mus- 
ter the Continental soldiers, who, in sad disorder 
and panic-stricken, filled the farms and fields in 
the neighbourhood of Murray Hill. Washington's 
army had been disastrously worsted on Long 



MURRAY HILL 267 

Island, and was in flight; the leader's superhuman 
efforts to rally his men were thrillingly described 
by General Greene, who remarked: "He sought 
death, rather than life." Meanwhile Mrs. Mur- 
ray * was beguihng and flattering General Howe 
and passing the good cheer, with the assm*ance 
that the Continental troops had so long passed 
that way that pursuit was useless; and Washing- 
ton and Putnam, having rounded up their men, 
withdrew them in safety to Harlem Heights, 
where was fought the only battle of the Revolu- 
tion, within the limits of the present city, that 
resulted in victory for the Americans. This suc- 
cess clinched the dogged determination of their 
commander and made possible the brilliant ex- 
ploits at Trenton and Princeton. 

The steep, upward slope of the Avenue from 
the Waldorf Hotel to the Public Library con- 
tributes much to the brilliant effect of the great 
showy thoroughfare, known primitively as the 
backbone of the island, in the daj^s when the first 
John Jacob Astor had the foresight to buy the 
middle ground, instead of the then much more 
desirable East River shore. At the commence- 



* Mrs. Murray, who died soon after this patriotic incident, was 
a Miss Lindley of Philadelphia, a famous Quaker belle. Her son 
was Lindley Murray, the grammarian. 



268 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

ment of the present century, Mr. Astor began in- 
vesting the profits of commercial ventures in real 
estate upon Manhattan Island, whose immense 
future value he was one of the first to foresee. 
He bought meadows and farms in the track which 
the growth of the city would follow, trusting to 
time to multiply their worth. 

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel covers the site of 
two former Astor residences. The Waldorf was 
built in 1893 by William Waldorf Astor upon 
the site of John Jacob's town house, while, in 
1897, Colonel Astor erected the Astoria on the 
Thirty-fourth Street corner of Fifth Avenue, to 
replace his father's house. The AValdorf was 
called after the little village near Heidelberg, 
from which the founder of the family's fortune 
emigrated; and the Astoria was named for his 
greatest enterprise, the settlement of Astoria, at 
the mouth of the Columbia River, the subject of 
Washington Irving's novel of that name. The 
two hotels are now operated under one manage- 
ment. 

The hotels when built were considered the last 
word in sumptuous luxury, and besides being 
overlaid with gilt wherever possible, upholstered 
in velvet, and encrusted with marbles, were lav- 
ishly decorated by the chief of the available Amer- 




\l'^ 



■i 



Copyright by Hdztard Simmons 
Cofley Print. Copyiight, 1897, by Curtis and Cameron 



January; from a series of mural paintings representing the 
months and seasons in the astor gallery of the waldorf-astoria hotel 
by edward simmons (page 269) 



MURRAY HILL 269 

ican decorators of the period; and some of these 
managed their work so skilfully, despite a gen- 
eral fatness in the whole voluptuous scheme, that 
one room, at least of the half dozen treated, re- 
mains one of the fine things in the city, in its con- 
sistent moderation. This is the Astor Gallery, 
designed after the manner of the Hotel de Soubise, 
in Paris, decorated with sixteen allegorical pen- 
dentives representing the months and the seasons, 
by Edward Simmons. These are considered 
among the best work done by this talented mural 
painter, of which the city contains so much. The 
motives are joyous groups of women and cupids, 
exquisitely painted, without ponderous allegory, 
but light and charming simply, in sentiment as 
well as treatment. 

The Astoria restaurant contains murals by C. 
Y. Turner; the Marie Antoinette Room, a ceiling 
representing the " Birth of Venus," by Will Low; 
the small ballroom, in the Waldorf side, a ceiling 
by Fowler, and lunettes by Armstrong; the Red 
Room, or Library, a frieze by Maynard; while 
the grand ballroom, besides six lunettes by Low, 
is enriched by an early and beautiful decoration 
by Edwin Howland Blashfield, of which the sub- 
ject — Music and the Dance — is treated in a large 
oval ceiling panel, in dehcate and charming colour. 



270 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

A vaulted effect of sky is intended, in which ap- 
pears a celestial orchestra, composed of two groups 
of half-draped nudes — at one end playing the 
strings and at the other the cymbals and wind 
instruments, and crowning a central figure with 
bay. 

The Waldorf was a pioneer in this country in 
the matter of hotel decoration, setting a standard 
which newer hotels strove to reach or surpass. 
The Imperial, the Martinique, the McAlpin — all 
nearby, in Broadway — and the Vanderbilt, over 
on Park Avenue, are all lavishly decorated with 
varying success. The Imperial, built by McKim, 
Mead, and White, about twenty-five years ago, 
naturally secured something unusual and of fine 
quahty. The first mural painting done by Abbey 
— that of Bowling Green, over the bar — was 
painted for Stanford White, who also commis- 
sioned Thomas W. Dewing to paint for the ceil- 
ing of the small cafe the circular panel which was 
removed from that place about two years ago and 
replaced by an inferior work. It was the only 
mural painting by Mr. Dewing in the city, and its 
mysterious disappearance from the hotel for which 
it was made is a matter of much regret. For- 
tunately, Mr. Dewing had the small sketch, by 
which one may still judge the delicacy and beauty 



MURRAY HILL 271 

of this panel. The Imperial owns also a collec- 
tion of pictures, including Bouguereau's " Art 
and Music." 

The Martinique, built by Hardenbergh, the 
architect of the Waldorf-Astoria, contains, in its 
Louis XV dining room, portrait panels by Car- 
roll Beckwith and Irving R. Wiles, depicting the 
notables of the court of the French king, and other 
decorations by Charles M. Sheen and C. Y. 
Turner. 

A most interesting feature of the McAlpin 
Hotel is the series of twenty-six tapestries from 
the Herter Looms, which are hung about the 
walls of the mezzanine gallery. These tapestries, 
executed after designs by Albert Herter, are im- 
portant as examples of American tapestry, an 
industry created by the artist. In 1908 Mr. 
Herter established the looms that bear his name 
and started to weave tapestries of the kind made 
in the Netherland in the time of Charles V. The 
panels in the Hotel McAlpin picture the story of 
New York from earhest times. In texture they 
aim to reproduce the low-warp fabric of the golden 
age of tapestry. 

The lunettes in the lobby of the hotel are by 
Gilbert White, who made the decorations for the 
court-house in New Haven and the state capitol 



272 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

of Kentucky. In the bar are tiny lunettes by 
S perry. 

The Knickerbocker Trust Company, that mas- 
sive white building on the upper side of Thirty- 
fom^th Street, opposite the Waldorf-Astoria, re- 
places the " marble palace " of Alexander T. 
Stewart, the first of New York's merchant princes, 
which stood scarcely a quarter of a century. 
Stewart never lived in it, but his widow resided 
there until her death, in 1886, when the house 
passed into public hfe. The Knickerbocker Trust 
Building is one of many designed by McKim, 
Mead, and White which contribute to the beauty 
of the Avenue. The Gorham Building, with its 
fine cornice, repeating that of the Strozzi Palace 
of Florence, itself copied from a Roman antique, 
is one of the handsomest; the Tiffany Building is 
less successful in its somewhat perverse adapta- 
tion of the architectural features of the Casa 
Grimani, of the Grand Canal, in Venice. This 
noble example of florid Italian Renaissance, the 
chef d'oeuvre of Sanmicheh, has itself been criti- 
cized for monotony in the repetition of its second 
and third stories; though Ruskin calls it " the prin- 
cipal type in Venice and one of the best in Europe 
of the Renaissance schools." The New York ver- 
sion is doubly monotonous, many of the hand- 



^Tv^ 



4m kj^. -d!^« 



-VS5 







"CATTLE FAIR, BOWLING CREEX/' KROM A TAPKSTRY IX THE MCALPIX HOTEL 
RY ALBERT HERTER ( PAGE 2Jl) 




'THE JEUKl ~. \:\ 1,11 KKKT WHITE 
DECORATION IX THE LOBBY, MCALPIX HOTEL (PAGE 2/1) 



MURRAY HILL 273 

some, striking features of the old Reale Corte 
d'Appello, such as the fine entrance with the 
sculpture in the spandrels, the fluted (instead of 
plain) pilasters and columns, the central windows 
in the upper stories, and the charming disposition 
of the other windows — having been changed or 
suppressed for the advantage of commerce. 
Ruskin could not have written of the Tiffany 
Building as he wrote of its prototype: " There is 
not an erring line, not a mistaken proportion 
throughout its noble front." 

The Herald Building, which has long stood 
concealed behind the shanties of the construction 
company engaged in building the new subway 
lines, is one of Stanford White's most famous 
adaptations. Inspired by the exquisite Palazzo 
del Consiglio, of Verona, it repeats indeed most 
accurately much of the detail of the Old Town 
Hall or Loggia, as it is usually called. This 
ancient building, designed by Giocondo, and a 
famous example of early Renaissance, was re- 
stored four centuries after its erection, in 1876, 
just prior to White's period of study in Europe, 
whence he returned, filled with enthusiasm for the 
masterpieces of Italian architecture. The original 
is much smaller and quite different in proportion. 
Its facade is crowned with statutes of eminent 



274 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

natives of Verona; these White has replaced, in 
his copy, by a row of owls, whose electric eyes are 
supposed to blink the hours, and the bronze clock 
with mechanical figures surmounted by Minerva. 
The clock was made by a French sculptor, An- 
tonin Jean Carles, and Minerva was exhibited at 
the Salon of 1894. Condemned to the endless 
activities of the newspaper world, planted in the 
thick of congested traffic, and now obliterated by 
the upheavals of the underground road, the ghost 
of the Palazzo del Consiglio seems reproachfully 
to quote: " To what base uses may we return at 
last! " 

Of White's meticulous care in the detail and 
finish of his work, we have a beautiful example 
in the restoration and embelhshment of Renwick's 
Church of St. Bartholomew, on Madison Avenue 
for the moment, but about to remove to a new 
edifice on Park Avenue, of which Goodhue is the 
architect. Few remember the unpretentious little 
church erected here in 1865, on the outskirts of 
the growing city. Its improvements brought it 
into prominence about twenty years ago, when 
some members of the wealthy congregation wished 
to present the bronze doors, now a feature of the 
front, in order to keep pace with the gifts to 
Trinity Church, downtown. When the scheme 



MURRAY HILL 275 

was first projected, it appeared that the plain 
modern Renaissance design would not support the 
elegance of six highly wrought surfaces of bronze ; 
and a rich portal was designed for each one of the 
three doorways. The next problem was to con- 
nect these ornate masses, and the triple porch was 
built to bind the three elaborate entrances to- 
gether into one composition. The harmonious 
effect of the altered ensemble is very creditable 
to the skill of the architects, Messrs. McKim, 
Mead, and White, to whom the elaboration of 
the fa9ade is due. The general design and treat- 
ment follows the wonderful portals of Aries 
and Saint Gilles in Languedoc, in the south of 
France. 

Much of the sculptured detail is the design of 
the architects themselves, but the main features 
were given to three sculptors. Andrew O'Connor 
designed the main doorway, with its enriched 
architraves and pilasters, its highly wrought lintel 
for the doorway proper, its storied tympanum, and 
the doors themselves. O'Connor made also, in 
its entirety, the broad frieze, in two short lengths, 
which flank the opening of the middle doorway — a 
colourful band of sculpture, in the more modern 
spirit, which, more than any other detail of the 
design, excites critical interest. The south door, 



276 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

with its rich tympanum and accessories, is by- 
Herbert Adams, and the north portal, its ana- 
chronistic tympanum inspired by Luca della Rob- 
bia, is the design of PhiHp Martiny. 

A roseate impression of the Ascension fills the 
west wall of the church, done by Francis Lathrop, 
his hand evidently guided by the architect, to 
judge from the subordination of the painting to 
the setting, which rather overshadows it in colour 
and quality. The colour of the picture repeats the 
scheme of the marbles, employed in the altar, with 
an oversweet harmony, and the eye, seeking relief, 
constantly travels to the handsome architectural 
frame in which Lathrop's painting is placed. 
This, overlaid with gold, is in character with the 
richly carved capitals of the marble columns sup- 
porting the roof, and other details of architecture, 
unmistakably bearing the hall-mark of White's 
taste, for his aesthetic standards were of the 
highest. 

How many of the enrichments of St. Barthol- 
omew's will be preserved in the new structure 
time will tell. It has been promised that the doors 
and the sculpture, where possible, will have place 
there, but much of the beauty of the present 
church will necessarily be useless, and it seems a 
great pity that this rather charming and certainly 




"XEW testament/' frieze, ST. BARTHOLO.MEU 's CHURCH 
ANDREW o'CONNOR, SCULPTOR 




■r<^:^'% 



OLD TESTAMENT. FRIEZE. ST. BARTHOLOMEW S CHURCH 

ANDREW o'CONNOR, SCULPTOR 




THE i'kwrili,:,-,. wv\liiKJ,,ll J(M)K, 

ANDREW o'cONNOR, SCULPTOR 



LAKlIilil OAIL V. illL, 



MURRAY HILL 277 

very interesting little place of worship should be 
demolished, after so short a sojourn in our midst. 
But the king is dead! Long live the king! The 
new church is to be very beautiful, and New York 
has no time for sentiment. 

The Brick Presbyterian Church seems a sorry 
anachronism in the present aspect of Fifth Ave- 
nue, where it stands perversely, sole relic of the 
vintage of the " fifties " of the last century, replac- 
ing that spectacular mansion, or castle, of Coventry 
Waddell, who, enriched by the fortunes of Andrew 
Jackson's administration, balanced momentarily, 
as it were, this freakish Gothic bauble on a prom- 
ontory of the old country road that extended 
beyond Madison Square in about the year 1845. 
" Waddell's Caster," an unfeeling brother dubbed 
it with uncompromising humour, comparing its 
towers, orioles, and gables to the vinegar cruets, 
mustard pots, and general equipment of the orna- 
mental table service, long since abolished by so- 
phisticated authorities on the art of correct dining. 
Though it stood less than a decade, Waddell's 
Caster cut a figure in its day, and appears in all 
the bravery of its original architecture in many 
old prints of the city. Mr. Waddell lost his 
fortune in the financial crash that preceded the 
Civil War, and, obliged to sacrifice his estate, the 



278 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

house was demolished and the grounds levelled to 
make way for the encroaching city. 

It is difficult to visuahze the effect of the desul- 
tory country road, now Fifth Avenue, in the year 
1854, when the old Brick Presbyterian Church, 
having once removed from its first location in 
Wall Street, dating from 1767, to a spacious lot 
in Beekman Street, overlooking City Hall Park, 
was again forced to go farther afield to catch up 
with a receding residence quarter. The new 
church, finished in 1858, stood as an outpost of 
the advancing city, upon a part of the Waddell 
tract. When, in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, Murray Hill was suddenly seized upon as 
desirable for residence, land values increased by 
leaps and boimds. In nine years the property 
for which Mr. Waddell had paid only $9,150 had 
advanced to $80,000, and the church for its por- 
tion was obliged to pay $58,000. 

A new fashion in domestic architecture was at 
this time just making its appearance in residence 
districts, superseding the fine old red brick houses 
in the London style; these now began to be 
replaced by the brown-stone fronts with high 
" stoops," so detrimental to the aspect of the city, 
and of which they were for many years a salient 
characteristic. 



MURRAY HILL 279 

The Brick Church— though committed to the 
material indicated by its original name, which there 
was no thought of changing — in deference to the 
accepted fashion of the day composed its base and 
trimmings and the greater part of the steeple of 
brownstone. The tower contained the old Beek- 
man Street bell and clock, and the architecture 
followed in its details the late classic, with the 
severe and barren effect of a formal New Eng- 
land meeting house. 

The exterior presents essentially the same ap- 
pearance as in the days when it counted as a 
feature of the upper Avenue, but when the cele- 
brated pastor, Henry Van Dyke, was called, about 
1883, it was felt that the interior needed restora- 
tion, and this, by some beneficent chance, was 
turned over bodily to John La Farge, already a 
person of some consequence in the field of art. 
The result is a most bewildering paradox. Out- 
side the prim, austere meeting house; inside the 
plain, strict surfaces structurally the same, but 
embroidered and embellished, after the manner 
of the early Itahan churches, from the eighth to 
the tenth centuries. 

La Farge applied himself to the plain interior 
with an unbridled hand. In its way its plainness 
was its great advantage, for it gave La Farge a 



280 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

base of operations comparatively untrammelled. 
The decoration follows closely that of the Cathe- 
dral of Torcello * and other churches of the same 
period, or earlier, in Ravenna, Venice, and else- 
where in Italy. 

In the decoration mosaic of various colours is 
combined with relief work in majolica, a product 
of the Minton manufactory imported from Eng- 
land. Even the embroideries in the curtains and 
drapery for the reading desk were designed by 
La Farge in perfect harmony with the ensemble, 
and he made the lanterns and the geometric win- 
dows, the elaborate organ loft, the rail of the 
gallery, and every minute decorated detail of this 
remarkable interior. The ceihng and cornice are 
important, bearing a rich, symbolic design in som- 
bre colours on a background of dull, weathered 
gold which enhance an effect of extraordinary 
beauty and interest. The congregation was well 
satisfied, and accepted easily the distinction of 
possessing in this exotic interior what was consid- 
ered one of the most important examples of deco- 
rative art in America; thej^ had given La Farge 
a free hand, and they did not question so specious 
a result. The artist, on the other hand, made of 
the church a glorious experiment^ developing the 

* 1008. 



MURRAY HILL 281 

possibilities of his glass to the utmost. Like an 
industrious spider, he spun his beautiful webs 
wherever he could get foothold; but if this par- 
ticular attachment seems peculiarly unsuited to 
his medium, one can at least admire the ingenuity 
with which ends were met, so that even when the 
thought comes, as come it must, of the irrelevancy 
of the whole decoration to the thing decorated, it 
comes with no shock, but is borne in softly upon 
the inner consciousness as the glowing interior 
gradually asserts itself in the dim light with which 
it is usually pervaded. 

While Boston is richest in the works of John 
La Farge, New York preserves much of the pro- 
lific output of this distinguished artist, in private 
houses as well as in the several contemporary 
churches treated by him. The famous Peony 
window made for the Marquand house is now 
owned by Mrs. Bliss, for whom La Farge made a 
wonderful cloissonne window; and some fine work 
was also done for Mrs. Payne Whitney. Less 
well known than the chef d'oeuvre in the Church 
of the Ascension are the panels representing the 
" Nativity of Christ " and the " Adoration of the 
Magi " by this artist in the chancel of the Church 
of the Incarnation, on Madison Avenue, not far 
from the Brick Church. These are handsome and 



282 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

strong — in a way more vigourous than the highly 
finished decoration of the "Ascension." They 
are, however, badly set, one each side of a white 
Gothic altar, which fills the eye to the detriment 
of the panels. The two windows by La Farge 
in this church are early examples of no great 
importance. 

The embellishment of the Church of the Incar- 
nation seems to have been pursued without defi- 
nite plan, and the result is more curious than 
pleasing. Most of the windows are English, sev- 
eral are by Henry Holiday, a close follower of 
Burne-Jones, whose methods were diametrically 
opposed to those of La Farge, so that it is un- 
fortunate for the ensemble that the work of the 
two artists should be thus juxtaposed. There are 
two small memorial windows of little consequence 
from the estabhshment of WiUiam Morris. The 
Romanesque monument, on the north side of the 
church, to the memory of Henry E. Montgomery, 
was designed by the late Henry H. Richardson, 
the architect of Trinity Church, Boston, and the 
bronze medalhon and inscription plates were exe- 
cuted by Augustus Saint Gaudens. Louis Saint 
Gaudens made the sculpture for the font, sur- 
mounted by a figure of John the Baptist, and the 
bas-relief representing the Church Mihtant and 




Copyright by John La Farg 

"welcome," window in residence of 

MRS. GEORGE T. BLISS, Q EAST 68tH STREET 
BY JOHN LA FARGE (PAGE 281) 



luryyi'jht !'y Jolni La Lai 
MEMORIAL WINDOW TO EDWIN BOOTH 
CHURCH OF THE TRANSFIGURATION 
BY JOHN LA FARGE (PAGE 283) 



MURRAY HILL 283 

the Church Triumphant. The rehef portrait of 
Phillips Brooks is by W. Clark Noble, sculptor. 
La Farge is again represented, and rather 
charmingly, in that strange, rambling old Church 
of the Transfiguration, in Twenty-ninth Street, 
better known and loved as the " Little Church 
Around the Corner." From it have been buried 
Wallack, Booth, and Boucicault, and in it " The 
Players " erected their memorial window to Ed- 
win Booth, in 1898. La Farge made it in his 
freest manner. It shows a seated figure, repre- 
senting a medieval histrionic student, his gaze fixed 
upon a mask held in his hand. Below is Booth's 
favourite quotation: 

" As one in suffering all 
That suffers nothing: 

A man that fortune's buflFets and rewards 
Has taken with equal thanks." — Hamlet III. 2. 

The Church of the Transfiguration has been 
accepted warmly by the theatrical profession ever 
since the funeral of George Holland, one of the 
favourite actors of Wallack's Theatre, was held 
in that church. The story of a neighbouring rec- 
tor's refusal to perform the funeral rites over the 
body because Mr. Holland had been an actor is 
movingly described by Joseph Jefferson in his 
reminiscences. Mr. Jefferson, accompanied by 



284 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

one of George Holland's sons, went in quest of a 
minister to officiate. " On arriving at the house," 
says Mr. Jefferson, " I explained to the reverend 
gentleman the nature of my visit, and arrange- 
ments were made for the time and place at which 
the funeral was to be held. Something, I can 
scarcely say what, gave me the impression that I 
had best mention that Mr. Holland was an actor. 
I did so in a few words, and concluded by presum- 
ing that probably this would make no difference. 
I saw, however, by the restrained manner of the 
minister and an unmistakable change in the ex- 
pression of his face, that it would make, at least 
to him, a great deal of difference. After some 
hesitation he said that he would be compelled, if 
Mr. Holland had been an actor, to decline hold- 
ing the service at the church. 

" While his refusal to perform the funeral rites 
for my old friend would have shocked, under ordi- 
nary circumstances, the fact that it was made in 
the presence of the dead man's son was more 
painful than I can describe. I turned to look 
at the youth and saw that his eyes were filled 
with tears. He stood as one dazed with a blow 
just realized; as if he felt the terrible injustice 
of a reproach upon the kind and loving father 
who had often kissed him in his sleep and had 



MURRAY HILL 285 

taken hini on his lap when a boy old enough to 
know the meaning of the words and told him to 
grow up to be an honest lad. I was hurt for my 
young friend and indignant with the man — too 
much so to reply, and as I rose to leave the room 
with a mortification that I cannot remember to 
have felt before or since, I paused at the door and 
said : ' Well, sir, in this dilemma, is there no other 
church to which you can direct me from which 
my friend can be buried? ' 

" He rephed that ' There was a little church 
around the corner ' where I might get it done — to 
which I answered, ' Then if this be so, God bless 
the Little Church Around the Corner,' and so I 
left the house." 

A bit of old world, forgotten here, the low, 
rambling structure set within a garden whose en- 
trance is marked by a lich gate, unique in this 
country, is full of poetic feehng. The simplicity, 
the sincerity of the dim interior lend essentially 
to the highest personal expression of the devo- 
tional spirit. It has the charm of a place dwelt 
in harmoniously, worshipped in abundantly, em- 
bellished lovingly. 



XIV 

THE AVENUE 

In its northward course Fifth Avenue marks 
two imposing centres — one of trade, the other of 
fashion, and both architecturally enriched by the 
work of Messrs. Carrere and Hastings. If the 
Plaza, with Bitter's "Fountain of Abundance," 
makes a pivot for the circlings of the gay world, 
the Public Library fits no less snugly into the 
heart of the busy shopping district, and seems 
most fortunately placed, both for looks and service. 
Directly succeeding the granitic mass of the old 
Reservoir, it owes the spaciousness of its setting 
to the happy accident which reserved, from early 
days, the summit of Murray Hill as city property. 
Long before Fifth Avenue came into corporeal 
being, the land upon which Bryant Park and the 
Library are now situated was bought by the city 
for a potter's field. After 1842 the park was 
known as Reservoir Square, in honour of the first 
distributing reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, the 
same whose overflow found vent in the sumptuous 



THE AVENUE 287 

fountain of Union Square. In the western part 
of the park the Crystal Palace, built upon the 
type of the famous Crystal Palace of London, to 
house our first world's fair, was opened in 1853. 
These were the " sights " of those days; the Res- 
ervoir marked the objective of northward walks, 
for from the height of its curious Egyptian walls 
an extensive view was obtainable. 

The Crystal Palace burned up after five years' 
glorious extravagance, for the enterprise never 
paid, burying in its ruins the rich collection of the 
American Institute Fair. The Reservoir stood 
until 1900, when the civic corporation gathered 
into grand alhance the minor libraries of the 
town and the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden founda- 
tions were combined to make the New York 
Public Library. 

It was doubtless indirectly due to his intimacy 
with Washington Irving that John Jacob Astor 
founded the library which bears his name, incor- 
porated in 1849, with Irving as first president. 
The building in Lafayette Place was for many 
years one of the literary landmarks of New York, 
and still stands, untenanted, opposite the rapidly 
disappearing Colonnade Row, and equally marked, 
no doubt, for speedy demolition. 

Ten years before his death, in 1870, James 



288 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Lenox, one of America's greatest book collectors, 
gave to the city of his birth his books and his art 
treasures and a liberal endowment fund for the 
maintenance of the Lenox Library, now replaced 
by Mr. Prick's palatial residence. Both the Astor 
and the Lenox Libraries were for reference, 
merely, and it was not until the city received the 
munificent Tilden bequest, which more than 
doubled its endowment fund, and added materially 
to its collections, that provision was made for a 
circulation department, and the new corporation 
was established. The question of a site for the 
building was happily settled by the existence, in 
the heart of the city, of this large piece of city 
property, unencumbered save for the old, disused 
reservoir. 

In a competition held in 1897 to decide upon the 
architect for the Library, the design of Messrs. 
Carrere and Hastings, of New York, was chosen, 
and that firm awarded the commission for its erec- 
tion. The building is monumental and imposing 
in the eighteenth century French style. Designed 
to face the Avenue, it sets well back from the 
street, within a dignified approach, and raised suf- 
ficiently, by means of its terrace and steps, to give 
it just the right note of reserve and distinction. 
The warm colour of the Vermont marble, taken 




ROMANCE. ONE OK SIX FICTKl-.S ON THE ATTl 
OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
BY PAUL WAYLANI) BARTLF.TT (PACK 28q ) 



THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
CARRERE AND HASTINGS, ARCHITECI: 
ERECTING THE BARTLETT STATUES 
TO THE ATTIC (PAGE 289) 




THE AVENUE 289 

together with the building's fine lateral expan- 
sion — the " seated " look, as James expressed it — 
and the interest added to an already agreeable 
fa9ade by the spirited sculpture, in the French 
decorative style, there applied, express hospital- 
ity and give to this rather fascinating part of 
town a central point of interest and beauty. 
Against its stable bulk picturesque effects are 
possible; and the live, human quality that is New 
York's most appealing asset comes here into 
pleasing prominence. 

The effective note in the building, emphasizing 
its Louis XVI feeling, is the treatment of the 
attic story, above the main entrance, where have 
recently been placed the six figures — History, 
Drama, Poetry, Rehgion, Romance, and Philoso- 
phy—by Paul Wayland Bartlett. Made in the 
sculptor's studio in the rue Commandeur, Paris, 
these figures have distinctly the French feeling, 
and lend colour and vivacity to the lines of the 
fa9ade, where, because they present a departure 
from the accepted pseudo-classic type, current in 
the sculpture of our public buildings, they have 
excited controversy and proved quite a. shock to 
the complacency of public taste. If they are a 
little strong for their place, on an unusually nar- 
row phnth, any flattening of their surfaces, in the 



290 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

traditional classic manner, would have destroyed 
the very element for which they were created — the 
colour and vivacity, the spirit and animation of an 
otherwise rather conventional front. But the 
public abhors change; all it asks is to rest in the 
security of accepted tradition — not to be made to 
think. 

It will be remembered that when Carpeaux 
made his famous group. La Danse, for the Paris 
Opera, it was so at variance with the habits of 
popular taste that even the architect disliked it, 
and ordered another group from a different 
sculptor, but Carpeaux' death, which occurred at 
this critical moment, caused a revulsion of popular 
feeling in favour of his work and the group was 
allowed to remain. It is now considered the great 
redeeming feature of the Opera House. 

So Mr, Bartlett's figures were not accepted 
without some discussion. His first charming con- 
ception of Romance was refused on the same 
amazing charge as that made against MacMonnies' 
" Bacchante," rejected by the Boston Public Li- 
brary — indecency. The original Romance is a 
figure of rare poetic beauty, a very flower of 
sculpture; had the architects had courage to place 
it, it would have made the enduring glory of the 
building. Even in its modified form, as it stands 



THE AVENUE 291 

on the attic story, the figure is especially free 
and delightful; rarely expressive in its youth and 
grace. 

The extraordinary effect of high rehef in these 
figures is the more remarkable when we know 
some of the difficulties which the problem pre- 
sented. The plinth upon which they stand is but 
one foot wide. They are ten feet six inches 
in height by one foot six inches at their greatest 
depth. Some additional space was made for the 
draperies that blow against the wall behind them, 
by cutting into the face of that wall. Mr. 
Bartlett's original design showed, instead of 
the upright pairs of figures, groups conceived to 
give further variety to the facade. History and 
Philosophy were to have stood, as now at the 
ends, with Drama and Poetry, Religion and 
Romance linked together in two effective composi- 
tions; but this was too great a departure from 
tradition, and as they stand the six figures carry 
out the lines of the supporting columns under 
them. 

The Library has been nearly twenty years 
under way. During that time, many important 
things have occurred, bearing directly upon its 
fortunes. The Art Commission was formed the 
year after the plans were accepted. Saint 



292 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Gaudens, who was to have directed the choice of 
sculptors and supervised the work, died ten years 
later. The original scheme divided the figures 
amongst as many sculptors as possible, and only 
the tact and courage of the architects spared 
us a repetition of the fiasco of the Appellate 
Court. 

Three other sculptors are represented on the 
Library's main front: Mr. Potter, by the heroic 
lions that flank the entrance; Mr. Barnard, by 
the pediments in the ends; and Mr. MacMonnies, 
by the fountains at each side of the entrance. 
These last will represent the sculptor's latest work 
in a city where he is already prolifically and 
splendidly in evidence. The staff models, erected 
in place, recall the Trevi fountain in Rome, the 
figures — Truth and Beauty — being placed within 
niches in half reclining poses, while the water, 
flowing from beneath the pedestals, fills the basins 
in front. 

The Library houses an important collection of 
paintings and prints. The paintings, maintained 
by the institution, but not increased, comprise the 
gifts of three donors: James Lenox, whose col- 
lection of about fifty paintings was presented, in 
1877; the Robert L. Stuart collection of about 
246 paintings, bequeathed by Mrs. Stuart, in 



THE AVENUE 293 

1892; and some of John Jacob Aster's pictures, 
presented by William Waldorf Astor, in 1896. 

The Stuart Gallery is typical of the taste of 
collectors of its period, which dealt exclusively 
with foreign artists of salon fame, a few Barbison 
painters, and our own Hudson River men. The 
Lenox collection is more eclectic, containing, be- 
sides many fine eighteenth century portraits, a 
number of interesting examples of the American 
school that developed along those lines. There is 
a beautiful Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing 
Mrs. Billington as Saint Ceciha, listening to the 
celestial choir. Apropos of this picture, Haydn 
is supposed to have gallantly suggested that the 
angels would have been better employed in listen- 
ing to Mrs. Bilhngton. Amongst the early 
American portraits are those of David Garrick, 
by Robert Edge Pine; Robert Lenox, by Trum- 
bull; a charming unfinished head of Mrs. Robert 
Morris, by Gilbert Stuart; a portrait of Wash- 
ington, by James Peak; a fine Copley, of Mrs. 
Robert Hooper; and two delightful portraits by 
Morse, one of Fitz-Greene Halleck and the orig- 
inal study for the portrait of Lafayette, in City 
Hall. With the Lenox pictures came also the 
original bust of Alexander Hamilton, by Cer- 
racchi, the Roman sculptor, who visited this coun- 



294 A l^OITERER IN NEW YORK 

try after the close of the Revolution with the idea 
of interesting congress in a monument to Liberty, 
which he had designed for our special delectation, 
and his own aggrandizement. 

Between the Library and the Plaza, Fifth 
Avenue reveals its most brilliant aspect, wears 
its most opulent effect. Though business has 
taken firm foothold in this more rarefied section, 
driving the ultrafashionable beyond Fifty-ninth 
Street, the shops, extending quite up to Central 
Park, vie with the clubs, residences, and churches 
in architectural interest. Many of the better class 
art dealers have estabhshed themselves here, and 
exhibitions flourish throughout the season. The 
buildings, erected by the firm of Carrere and 
Hastings, for Black, Starr, and Frost, and for 
Knoedler, are in excellent taste, and the Duveen 
house is highly ornamental to the street. The 
latter transports to Fifth Avenue a handsome 
bit of French architecture, the work of Monsieur 
Rene Sergent, of Paris, and Mr. Horace Trum- 
bauer, of Philadelphia. 

The Temple Emanu-El, considered a fine 
example of Moorish architecture, designed by 
Leopold EidHtz, dates from 1868. 

One of the many features of this part of the 
Avenue, and the most celebrated, is St. Patrick's 




WILLIAM CULLEX BRYANT, BY HERBERT ADAMS 
BRYANT PARK (PAGE 292) 



THE AVENUE 295 

Cathedral, conceived in 1850, by Archbishop 
Hughes, of the diocese of New York, and erected 
during the nineteen succeeding years, after the 
designs of James Renwick, the architect of Grace 
Church and St. Bartholomew's. Renwick con- 
sidered it his chief work; and the cathedral holds 
high rank as an example of the decorated, or 
geometric, style of Gothic architecture that pre- 
vailed in Europe in the thirteenth century, and 
of which the cathedrals at Rheims, Cologne, and 
Amiens are typical. It is built of marble with a 
base course of granite. Said to be the eleventh 
in size of the cathedrals of the world it has a 
capacity of 18,000 persons. The modern French 
and Roman windows, which, to the eye of the later 
criticism, impair the beauty of the simple interior, 
were considered something most desirable in their 
day, and their completion was hastened in order 
that they might be shown at the Centennial 
Exhibition, of 1876, where they were a feature 
much admired. One of them — the window erected 
to St. Patrick — has at least an antiquarian in- 
terest. It was given by the architect, and 
includes, in the lower section, a picture of Ren- 
wick presenting the plans of the cathedral to 
Cardinal McCloskey. 

The rose window is said to be a fac-simile of 



296 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the rose window at Rheims, recently destroyed 
by German bombs; a provenance that may be the 
more securely claimed since the original has been 
immolated. As a matter of fact it, too, bears the 
stigma of the Centennial period, of which it is a 
characteristic example. The only windows of 
aesthetic interest in the church are the recent lights 
in the ambulatory, made by different firms in 
competition for the windows of the Lady Chapel, 
which is to be treated in the same rich manner. 
St. Thomas' Church, opposite, is one of the 
chief architectural ornaments of New York, re- 
cently rebuilt upon the site of the original, an 
imposing brown-stone structure of the early 
seventies, the design of Richard Upjohn, and 
famous for its decorations by La Farge and Saint 
Gaudens. The church, with its artistic contents, 
was destroyed by fire about ten years ago; and 
the present edifice represents the design of Ralph 
Adams Cram, carried out by his former partner, 
Bertram Goodhue. Built of white limestone, 
with certain effective splashes of dark that varie- 
gate and enliven it, the fa9ade is very beautiful, 
though unfortunately squeezed by the adjoining 
business building, recently crowded in, replacing 
one of the Vanderbilt houses — for this part of 
the Avenue was the Vanderbilt stronghold. 



THE AVENUE 297 

The restricted lot is even more meretricious 
in its effect upon the interior, in which one feels 
the lack of expansion, and the inexpressiveness of 
the blind north wall. The exterior seems to 
promise something richer and warmer than this 
rather drab realization, with its insistent black- 
outhned stone facing, its Quaker-grey woodwork, 
and the geometric windows of the clerestory. The 
rose window and the tall hghts of the sanctuary 
are, indeed, most lovely in design and depth of 
colour, and the reredos, when placed, will no doubt 
enhance the effect. The reredos will reproduce 
so far as is possible the Saint Gaudens reredos 
of the old church. Though it was totally de- 
stroyed by the fire, excellent photographs of it 
had been taken, and from these Lee Lawrie, an 
American sculptor, is reconstructing a similar 
panel. 

The Gothic note is emphasized in this part of 
the Avenue by the adjacent Vanderbilt houses, 
of which the earlier, at the corner of Fifty-second 
Street, was inspired by a chateau in the Vosges, 
and represents, at his best, one of the builders of 
New York — Richard Morris Hunt — who, until 
superseded by his young colleague, Stanford 
White, was the architect most sought after by 
the cognoscenti of the city. Hunt made the 



298 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

central part of the new Metropolitan Museum, 
and the Lenox Library; he built the twin Vander- 
bilt houses further down the Avenue. He was 
one of a talented family — his brother was the 
celebrated painter, AVilham Morris Hunt. A 
man of excellent tradition, his work was highly 
esteemed in New York; and when he died, in 
1895, the art societies of the city erected the 
monument to his memory, by Daniel Chester 
French, which stands at Seventieth Street and 
Fifth Avenue, opposite Mr. Frick's house. 

This Gothic chateau, transported to the heart 
of fashionable New York, has been shorn of the 
dignity of even a tiny setting by the widening 
of the Avenue, and seems to stand rather 
abruptly on the building line. Hunt carried out 
the Gothic spirit in the handsome doorway, really 
one of the most beautiful things on the Avenue. 
The little stone effigy of the architect, seated on 
the peak of the mansard, is a humorous and 
characteristic touch. The adjoining house, be- 
longing to William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., has been 
made to correspond with Hunt's design, and the 
business buildings alongside make some attempt 
to carry out the spirit of the architecture and 
to connect with St. Thomas' on the next corner. 
Hunt, in his designs for the twin houses in brown 





THE HUNT MEMORIAL. CENTRAL PARK EAST 
BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH (PAGE 298) 



THE AVENUE 299 

freestone, built, in 1882, by William H. Vander- 
bilt, for himself and his daughter, stipulated that 
the material should be white marble, then greatly 
in vogue; but Vanderbilt owned a quarry of 
brownstone and the native product was employed. 

Arnold Bennett, with the easy decision of the 
casual visitor, picked the University Club as the 
building in New York that pleased him most; 
Henry James seemed to indicate a preference for 
the Metropolitan Club; while still a third critic, 
a celebrated French architect, told us that for 
purity of architecture New York held nothing 
comparable to the Harmony Club in Sixtieth 
Street. 

Of the many fine examples of the work of 
Charles Follen McKim, the University Club, the 
Morgan Library, and the Library of Columbia 
University, stand out notably amongst the fea- 
tures of the city, and none perhaps exceeds in 
dignity and distinction the building officially 
erected by Messrs. McKim, Mead, and White, at 
the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftj^- 
fourth Street. 

The junior member of the firm had already 
given to the city a new proof of his equipment 
in the design and interior construction and em- 
beUishment of the Metropolitan Club, whose 



300 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

calm surface protests against the heterologous 
inventions of the upper Avenue. But, fine as it 
unquestionably is, it seems to compare not at all 
in personality, nor in its outward expression of 
its ultimate purpose, to the mature product of 
White's accomplished partner. McKim's prob- 
lem, too, presented unwonted difficulties. He had 
to construct a house consisting really of nine 
stories, necessitated by the requirements of the 
club, so as to conceal this fact and to present a 
graceful fa9ade with proportions satisfactory to 
the fastidious eye. This has been done with ex- 
traordinary success, and no one sensitive to archi- 
tectural charm can pass the University Club 
without taking off his hat to this achievement or 
pausing to congratulate the Avenue upon its most 
impressive feature. 

The Palazzo Farnese seems to have furnished a 
theme for the building, which follows in the main 
the fifteenth century Florentine in architecture. 
Besides the handsome Renaissance doorway, the 
balconies, the coat of arms above the second main 
story of the Fifty-fourth Street front, the two 
fa9ades are enriched in a fashion suggested by 
the source of inspiration. Between the small 
windows of the two mezzanine floors are sculp- 
tured in Knoxville marble the shields of the 



THE AVENUE 301 

various colleges represented in the club, carved 
in high relief. Beneath each is the Latin in- 
scription conveying the appropriate mottoes. 
This form of shields, or coats of arms, with 
inscriptions beneath, were common in the decora- 
tive details of the Italian Renaissance, and are 
frequent in Italy, notably in the Court of the 
Bargello, in Florence. 

The club's seal was designed by Kenyon Cox, 
and executed by George Brewster; and may be 
seen, carved in stone, on the main front high up 
above the entrance. It represents two Greek 
youths, their hands clasped in friendship. One 
holds a tablet, bearing the word " Patria," the 
other a torch symbohzing learning as well as 
eternity. The derivation is from the old Greek 
race in which the runner carried a burning torch 
until he fell exhausted, when he passed it to 
another, indicating the light of learning that 
scholars keep alive and transmit from generation 
to generation. 

The same idea has been adapted by Charles 
E. Keck in his decorative panel above the fire- 
place of the central hall within. The figure of 
Athene introduced in the panel is altogether 
different from the statuette on the shield, but 
expresses the same thought. 



302 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

The interior of the University Club is one of 
the marvels of New York, unpardonably inac- 
cessible. For one month, January, 1900, its 
treasures were thrown open to a selected public, 
on certain days and during certain hours. Its 
hospitality was liberally appreciated and thou- 
sands visited the handsomely decorated rooms, 
which were further enriched and embellished by 
the hanging of rare and beautiful tapestries and 
draperies lent from the remarkable collections of 
Stanford White. Since that time the manage- 
ment has followed the stringency of the London 
clubs in reserving its features strictly for the 
enjoyment of members. 

The club is chiefly famous for the decorations 
of the library by H. Siddons Mowbray. These 
decorations consist of seven large lunettes and 
thirty-four minor panels, besides sculpture and 
ornament, all executed by this artist. The gen- 
eral scheme of design and color, with its at- 
tendant richness, is founded on the architectural 
decorations of Pinturicchio in the Hbrary at Siena 
and in the Borgia Apartments at the Vatican. In 
thus choosing its type from among the greatest 
mural paintings of the world McKim was true 
to the faith of his firm. It was first intended 
to make a copy of the decoration of the Borgia 



THE AVENUE 303 

Apartments, but this idea, except for its richness 
and general plan, was gradually dropped as the 
work proceeded in Mr. Mowbray's studio in 
Rome, conditions rendering a copy impossible. 

The magnificent rooms of the Borgia pope are 
moderate in size, separated by simple doorways, 
and not to be seen en suite; their walls are of 
light plaster, toned in patterns to imitate marble 
and varied stones, while those of the New York 
club are lined with woodwork, shelves, and books. 
There is, however, a general similarity of con- 
struction in the arches and lunettes of the ceiling 
of the library and those decorated by Pinturicchio. 

It happened opportunely that the Borgia 
Apartments, long closed to the pubHc, had been 
cleaned and restored and, in 1897, opened by 
Pope Leo XIII, so that during Mr. Mowbray's 
sojourn in Rome they were accessible for study. 
Not only the paintings, but the small figures in 
relief in the panels, and the final architectural 
mouldings were designed by the artist and, with 
the exception of the last, entirely executed by him. 
These mouldings were all done by hand, to avoid 
mechanical repetition, and were carved by native 
workmen under the painter's supervision, in his 
workshop in the Via Margutta. 

Though frankly derived from Pinturicchio 



304 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

much of the decoration is Mr. Mowbray's own. 
In four of the alcoves he has utihzed as many 
of the master's designs, following with close fi- 
delity the details of certain panels symbohzing 
Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Rhetoric in 
the Vatican. In addition to these lunettes there 
are panels in the ceiling illustrating mythological 
types and episodes wherein Pinturicchio again 
may be identified. But the large lunettes at the 
ends of the gallery, Romance, at the east, and 
History, at the west, are Mr. Mowbray's own, 
as are also the entire central bay, the panels in 
gold rehef, the ornament of the arches, and 
most of the secondary paintings. 

The rehgious element, an important feature of 
the Borgia decorations, is introduced in two demi- 
lunettes over the central white marble portal — 
the Old and the New Testament. The secondary 
panels in the arches and the ceiling, carrying out 
two of Pinturicchio's themes, are devoted to 
Greek mythology and the myth of Isis and 
Osiris; the four smaller rectangular panels over 
the central bay, to Literature, Art, Science, and 
Philosophy; the four medalhon portraits over 
each of the compartments on each side of the 
central one are, on the east, of Dante, Tasso, 
Virgil, and Petrarch, and on the west, of Homer, 




UNIVERSITY CLUB l.IBKAKV. CHARLES FOLLEX MtKlM, AKllUTECI 

EAST END SHOWINC, DECORATIONS BY H. SIDDONS MOWBRAY (PA(;E 304) 



THE AVENUE 305 

Socrates, Goethe, and Shakespeare. Two very 
narrow panels, heavy in rehef and gold, which 
descend on the wall on each side of the central 
white portal, represent, in medieval fashion, the 
Illumination, and the Inscription, and on the 
opposite wall are the Papyrus and the Book. 
Throughout all of these decorations, so varied in 
theme and in composition, the text is clear, and 
the application of the decoration to the purpose 
of the place decorated has not once been for- 
gotten. 



XV 

THE PLAZA 

Driving one day down the Champs Elysees, 
my companion, a lady whose girlhood had been 
passed in the sumptuous days of the Third 
Empire, turned and said to me with conviction: — 
" L'automobile a beaucoup gate Paris! " I think 
of it every time I pass through this section of 
Fifth Avenue, especially from a perch on the top 
of one of the popular busses. If the automobile 
has taken the charm from Paris, where there is 
left such infinite variety to offset that deteriora- 
tion, how much more lamentably has New York 
suffered in the aspect of its one handsome show 
street! As one looks down upon it in the bril- 
Hant morning hours, when the butterflies are out 
in quest of plumage, what used to present a gay 
scene of prancing steeds, smart vehicles, elegant 
costumes, skilled drivers, and correct footmen, 
has now given place to a long, unbroken line 
of shiny black boxes, working their uneventful, 

306 



THE PLAZA 307 

colourless way, like some vast convocation of 
hearses bound for the cemetery. 

During the summer there has been of late a 
revival of the fiacre, in the form once accepted 
for park driving in the days when driving was 
a means of displaying beautiful clothes, and 
Central Park was something more than a short 
cut between formidable distances. This fiacre, 
or victoria, as it may be called, lends to the 
perverse state of leisure with which, sometimes, 
it is amusing to oppose the universal command 
to " step Hvely," which so regulates our habitual 
gait. It is quite worth the sensation to step 
into one of these antiquated vehicles, driven with 
some feeling for the moribund art, and to make 
the tour of the park, sympathetically, from the 
long approach up the Avenue, at the old-time 
pace. 

That Fifth Avenue, at the Plaza, has reached 
its ultimate climax is a conviction that grows with 
study. Now that it has been practically aban- 
doned to trade, we are to learn that there is 
nothing really chic beyond the gateway to the 
park. In its adventurous course from Wash- 
ington Square, during more than three-quarters 
of a century, its centre of interest had but to 
move from stage to stage. Now nothing can be 



308 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

done but to double on its tracks; unless it should 
be some day deemed possible to " treat " the park 
in some comprehensive architectural scheme that 
would make it subservient to a more monumental 
city of speculative conception. 

Whether or not this is what we are grandly 
to come, in the course of human events, Karl 
Bitter's last work, the " Fountain of Abundance," 
as the culminating feature of the new " lay out " 
of the Plaza, marks the now supreme spot in the 
centre of fashionable and beautiful New York. 
A posthumous work, for which, however, the 
sculptor left ample data, the figure, finished by 
a compatriot, Isidore Konti, was quietly placed 
in May, 1916, about a year after the sculptor's 
untimely death. Bitter and Konti were fellow 
students in the Imperial Academy of Art in 
Vienna; they came to this country at about the 
same time,* and both did important work in 
connection with the sculpture at the Columbian 
Exposition, which brought Konti into promi- 
nence, while Bitter, who had already made the 
doors for Trinity Church, and been discovered by 
the architects, as we have seen, it gave an oppor- 
tunity for bigger work in the decorative field so 
suited to his gifts and education. 

* Bitter in 1889, Konti in 1892. 



THE PLAZA 309 

These two native Austrians, bred in the one 
school, under the one master, came together for 
the first time in Chicago dm-ing their work for 
the World's Fair, of 1893, and formed a friend- 
ship which endured for twenty-two years, and 
was only terminated by the fatal calamity, by 
which Bitter, while still in the prune of life, was 
suddenly killed. Unfinished in his studio. Bitter 
left the sketch model for the figure of Abundance, 
to top the Plaza fountain, designed by Messrs. 
Carrere and Hastings. This, together with the 
architects' plans, was handed over to Mr. Konti, 
who, as he himself expresses it, rendered his in- 
terpretation of Bitter's creation, as a virtuoso 
interprets the composition of another musician. 
Abundance, as she stands, is entirely the execution 
of Mr. Konti, read from the small model left by 
her creator. The staff model, which Bitter had 
made merely to try the scale of the fountain in 
place, was not considered possible for perma- 
nency, though Mr. Konti advocated placing it, in 
its incomplete state, in order that his friend's last 
work should stand, unfinished but still in its 
entirety the product of his own brain and hand. 
Whether this fine sentiment was really im- 
practicable or not, one is not in a position to 
state, never having seen the staff model; but one 



310 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

thing is certain — Bitter's creation lost nothing in 
Konti's interpretation; rather, one may suppose, 
by comparing it with other works of the deceased 
sculptor, it gained in a certain grace and charm, 
both in the action of the figure and in the beauty 
of the handhng. 

A most lovely figure it is, so rich, so Renais- 
sance in feeling, so expressive, and so vital. It 
seems to epitomize the best in both sculptors, and 
to surpass the single creation of either. Sweetly 
ingratiating, this exotic presence, standing high 
above the generous, overflowing basin, strangely 
aloof from the conglomerate surroundings, which 
the architectural setting has done much, yet not 
enough, to mitigate, she bends graciously, ap- 
pealingly, her arms swung to the left holding a 
panier filled with fruits, her drapery connecting, 
strengthening the composition. If Bartlett's 
Romance is the companion of the lyrics of the 
Opera Comique, Abundance is of the world of 
Jean Goujon's Diana, yet, perhaps, more one 
of us in her human " sympatheticism." 

She is best seen from the rear, as one comes up 
the Avenue, her strong, young body silhouetted 
against the sky; but she must be studied also 
from a position due north, where the details of 
the fountain itself become visible, with the fine 




EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN 
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS. PLAZA (pAGE 3I4) 



1^1 



plan of the plaza 

carrere and hastings, architects 

(page 313) 



ll t VI II 

91! i! I 1^1 



THE PLAZA 311 

contrasts of the dark bronze above the stone 
basin, over whose rounded edge sheets of water 
pass and are blown forcefully by the wind; and 
there she has something of a worthy background 
in the chateau of Cornehus Vanderbilt * relating 
to her ancestry. 

This same " chateau " contains a rather precious 
chimney-piece supported by two caryatides, an 
early work of Augustus Saint Gaudens, of the 
epoch of the angel of the Morgan Monument, in 
Hartford, and the angel of St. Thomas' Church — 
both destroyed by fire— and of the Amor Caritas, 
preserved in the Luxembourg Museum. This 
winged figure, in Greek draperies, seems to have 
been a product of Saint Gaudens' student days 
in Paris, though as Taft points out she is " not 
related to those ample demoiselles who thrive and 
bloom so insistently upon the average French 
monument " — still the sculptor, animated by the 
Gallic feeling for visualizing the abstract spirit of 
an enterprise, introduces her floating above the 
march of the black regiment in the Shaw Me- 
morial, and in another phase she is presented to 
the vision beyond the climax of the Avenue, in 
that splendid glittering group of General Sher- 
man, led by Victory, at the entrance to the park. 

* By George B. Post, architect. 



312 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

In the Sherman equestrian group and the 
Lincoln at Chicago, finished towards the close of 
his hfe, Saint Gaudens reached the high-water 
mark of his genius. During Sherman's life the 
sculptor had modelled the bust, owned by the 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a 
Uteral record of the wrought and wrinkled face 
of the restless old general, very much as we see 
it again in the bronze group. The statue was 
made a number of years after the general's death, 
itself occupying a matter of six years, from the 
time when Saint Gaudens began the work, in 
Paris, to its final unveiling, on Decoration Day, 
1903. With the Shaw Memorial and the Amor 
Caritas, the Sherman won for its author the 
highest award of the Paris Exposition of 1900. 
Though he had exhibited it, Saint Gaudens did 
not consider it finished and revised it critically 
and changed it before it was shown again, for 
the first time in this country, at the Pan- 
American Exposition, of Buffalo. Here it was 
more effective, than in the Grand Palais, where 
it stood one among many large sculptural works; 
and placed impressively, facing the Fine Arts 
Building, it contributed a vigorous note to the 
magnificent architectural scheme of the arrange- 
ment. 



THE PLAZA 313 

Placed at first casually at the edge of the park, 
it stood for more than the first decade of its hfe 
on the outskirts of the rather paradoxical, con- 
glomerate apology for a square that marked 
our present "Grand Place"— siiW heterogeneous 
enough, but coming to something formal and 
elegant under the design of Messrs. Carrere and 
Hastings.* 

As for its aspect ten years ago, we have Henry 
James' dehcious word for it in his whole inimi- 
table description of the park, the statue, and the 
square.t And since, while in the very act of see- 
ing and even exaggerating the absurdity of the 
"mere narrow oblong" (the park) and the 
casual and inconsistent end to which things came 
at this curious terminus, where neighbourhoods 
still clash, where clanging trolley cars and rattling 
trucks, bound for the Queensborough Bridge, 

* This design embraces the rearrangement of the Plaza and 
constitutes the Joseph Pulitzer Memorial. At the present writing 
one-half of the architects' plan has been carried out. When the 
subway tunnelling under the Avenue at this point is finished the 
design already executed will be duplicated on the other side of 
Fifty-ninth Street, and the Sherman statue moved to a spot cor- 
responding to that occupied by the " Fountain of Abundance," so 
that the two works will balance each other in the completed ar- 
rangement. The driveway will sweep around behind the Sherman 
group, entering the park on a line with Sixtieth Street and the 
Hotel Plaza. 
t " The American Scene." Henry James. P. 166. 



314 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

weave a rough woof through fashion's purring 
motors, where saloons and newspaper stands and 
tobacco shops and chewing gum venders in Fifty- 
ninth Street, pursue unseemly commerce and back 
their mongrel shanties into the domain of elegance 
to the north and south of this persistent artery 
of civic vulgarity, he picks with discrimination the 
essence of the good in the statue, one must beheve 
that even then it dominated the petty meanness 
of inadequate surroundings and held its own. 
Just as one has been trying to prove all along, 
without pushing the point, it demonstrates the 
enduring nobihty of art, either in buildings or 
sculpture or whatever that cannot be downed, no 
matter how absorbing, how degraded even, the 
surroundings. 

Referring to this " most jovial of all the sacri- 
fices of preconsidered composition" our distin- 
guished visitor wrote: — 

" The best thing in the picture, obviously, is 
Saint Gaudens' great group, splendid in its 
golden elegance and doing more for the scene 
(by thus giving the beholder a point of such dig- 
nity for his orientation) than all its other elements 
together. Strange and seductive for any lover of 
the reasons of things this inordinate value, on the 
spot, of dauntless refinement of the Sherman 



THE PLAZA 315 

image; the comparative vulgarity of the environ- 
ment drinking it up, on one side, like an insatiable 
sponge, and yet failing at the same time sensibly 
to impair its virtue. The refinement prevails and, 
as it were, succeeds; holds its own in the medley 
of accidents, where nothing else is refined unless 
it be the amplitude of the * quiet ' note in the 
front of the Metropolitan Club; amuses itself, in 
short, with being as extravagantly ' intellectual ' as 
it hkes. Why, therefore, given the surrounding 
medium, does it so triumphantly impose itself, and 
impose itself not insidiously and gradually, but 
immediately and with force? Why does it not 
pay the penalty of expressing an idea and being 
founded on one? — such scant impunity seeming 
usually to be enjoyed among us, at this hour, by 
any artistic intention of the finer strain? But I 
put these questions only to give them up — for 
what I feel beyond anything else is that Mr. 
Saint Gaudens somehow takes care of himself." 
Take care of himself he capably does in the 
highest technical sense, in the immense measured 
value of handsomeness which the group presents 
on all sides; the sense of invincible oncoming in 
the stride of the maiden, the step of the lean 
charger, the inflation of the military draperies of 
the commander, the upright palm branch, and 



316 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the uplifted hand of the herald with her rich 
embelhshment of golden wings, all lending to 
an erectness of posture in the component parts of 
the statue whereby we feel the contributing value 
of long lines to the freedom of strong victorious 
advance. 

Yet great as is the decorative weight of this 
monument, more than equestrian by reason of 
the winged figure that comes before the com- 
mander and whose grace and sweeping force 
give special character and intention to the ap- 
proach of the horseman, there is always a 
haunting reservation in one's acceptance of the 
ensemble. Is there not a weakness in the neces- 
sity for an embodied Victory? Does not the too 
actual presence of this rather typical American 
girl, taking, as it were, the glory of the charge, 
that should all be present in the forward move- 
ment of the conquering hero himself, dock the 
doughty old general of his proudest plume? 

Taft saw her as a " spirit presence," a " per- 
sonification of a force " rather than as an in- 
dividual, the embodiment of a poetic inspiration 
permeating the whole brilliant scheme.* Ob- 
viously that was what Saint Gaudens wished to 
convey; and Taft, with the generosity of a 

* " History of American Sculpture." Lorado Taft. 



THE PLAZA 317 

brother sculptor, reads into the expression the 
full revelation that the author sought. But there 
is a lack of correlation between the poetic idea 
and the general's face, which is the literal, un- 
sculpturesque countenance of the Pennsylvania 
Academy's bust. The face does not reach to the 
heights of the ideality of the Victory, which calls 
for something more than literal portraiture. 
There is nothing exalted in the general's ex- 
pression: he looks, indeed, baffled; a little cheated 
of his right to a personal triumph as the victor; 
a little foolish and uncomfortably conscious of 
this goddess intrusion. From every point of view 
she fits the composition marvellously, she lends 
variety and vivacity to the statue; but in so 
doing she obscures the central idea, her presence 
is confusing and ambiguous, she tells too much, 
and she detracts from Sherman's triumphal entry 
— she takes the wind out of his sails. 



XVI 
CENTRAL PARK EAST 

YORKVILLE 

The " mere narrow oblong " offers itself, in 
the capacity most noted in these days of preferred 
gregariousness, chiefly as an obstacle to trafiic, 
a handicap that must be reckoned with in one's 
hectic cross-town dash in the upper regions with 
which we are now to deal. The intimacy with 
which the Common and the Pubhc Gardens are 
interwoven with the daily lives of all good 
Bostonians; the inviting charm whereby the 
Luxembourg Garden becomes the contributory 
factor to the quarter touching upon it; the 
graceful interlude in the traversings of countless 
footsteps yielded by the Tuileries form no part of 
the exhalation of Central Park. Even for sohtary 
rambhngs, such as are deliciously possible through 
the green pastures of Kensington Gardens, down 
the gentle decline to the real smartness of Hyde 

318 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 319 

Park Corner, the atmosphere is wanting in our 
factitious substitute. 

Mistrustful of the quality of its hospitality, 
questioning perhaps its right to wasteful holding, 
for the mere benefits of light and air, a tract of 
such inordinate value, as values go in our re- 
stricted acreage, the park presents an extraordi- 
nary effect of self-restraint, of lack of confidence, 
of having, with all the pretty artifices and artful 
dodges by which its small area is exaggerated, 
outlived its time. 

Park life with us has perhaps become ob- 
solete; our national breathlessness cannot brook 
this paradox of pastoral musings within sight 
and sound and smell of the busy lure of money- 
making. Within its gates we pass into a new 
element; and this element is antipathetic to the 
one-sided development imposed by city life. In- 
stead of resting us, it presents a problem, and 
the last thing for which we now have time is 
abstract thought. And so we prefer the dazzling, 
twinkling, clashing, clamouring, death-dealing, 
sinking, eruptive, insistent Broadway, where 
every bhnk of the eye catches a new impression, 
where the brain becomes a passive, palpitating 
receptacle for ideas which are shot into it through 
all the senses ; and where, between " stepping 



320 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

lively" and "watching your step," a feat of 
contradictoriness only equalled in its exaction by 
the absorbing exercise of slapping with one hand 
and rubbing with the other, independent thought 
becomes an extinct function. 

Not only does Central Park offer resistance 
to ready communication between the city's com- 
ponent parts, it demonstrates the breach, or 
yawning gulf, that separates several incompatible 
neighbourhoods of the island town. The trolley 
cars that rule off its southern boundary cut con- 
nections sharply and definitely between upper 
and lower Fifth Avenue. Beyond their parallel 
business may not pass. Till now the cold ex- 
ternahty of Milhonaires' Row, except for a few 
exclusive clubs and apartment houses — the latter 
gaining rapidly — has been secure against invasion, 
the last residential stronghold of exorbitant 
wealth. 

Even before Central Park was laid out Fifty- 
ninth Street was the dividing line between the 
most desirable sections of New York and the 
most promiscuous. Below was the centre of 
fashion and elegance; above, along the country 
road, now called Fifth Avenue, and throughout 
the unsightly waste land later taken for the 
park, lay the habitat of "squatters," the un- 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 321 

fortunate offscourings of our new civilization. 
Their encampment, reaching ahnost to Mount 
Morris Park, numbered over five thousand squalid 
and dreadful victims of poverty, who lived by 
cinder-sifting, rag-picking, and bone-boiling, in 
a state of abject misery. Rehcs of this curious 
colony remained until as recently as 1880, when 
the construction of the elevated roads and the 
running of surface cars made the section west of 
Central Park more accessible, and building opera- 
tions drove out this tribe of unfortunates. This 
was doubtless the source of the armies of pigs, 
of which Dickens wrote ironically in his im- 
pressions of New York; and the Harlem goats 
and chickens and shanties were visible long after 
the opening of the elevated road; while many old 
prints of New York dwell upon this picturesque 
aspect of the suburbs. 

Fifth Avenue above Fifty-ninth Street re- 
mained undeveloped for years. Prints of about 
the year 1860 show the pond of the New York 
Skating Club at this street just east of the 
Avenue, and photographs of more recent date 
preserve the amazing record of the block of small 
frame dwelhngs which antedated the first luxur- 
ious apartment house at Eighty-first Street, and 
the squatters' settlement, dislodged by Andrew 



322 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Carnegie's mansion, at Ninetieth Street. Until 
late in the nineties residences were scattered, 
with many vacant lots and mean buildings inter- 
vening, and there are still strange lapses in 
grandeur, most notable of all the peanut stand 
opposite the Metropolitan Museum, with its 
roughly fenced " back yard," abandoned to all 
the indignities of such weed-grown enclosures 
belonging to nobody in particular. 

The farms of the upper island extended 
through this region, only recently become val- 
uable. One of the notable cases, whose simple 
descent is readily traced, is the site of the Frick 
house, which, replacing the Lenox Library, oc- 
cupies part of the original farm of Robert Lenox, 
one of the early financiers of New York. This 
farm, extending from Sixty-eighth to Seventy- 
third Streets and from Fifth to Madison Avenues, 
was bought prior to 1829, by Robert Lenox, who 
had faith in its ultimate appreciation. The prop- 
erty for which he paid $40,000 is now estimated 
at over $9,000,000. The farm, comprising about 
thirty acres, descended to his son James, who 
erected thereon the famous Lenox Library, 
opened in 1877 as the first improvement of this 
character to the Avenue; for it antedated by 
several years the coming of the Metropolitan 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 323 

Museum that was to give to this district its 
aesthetic stamp. Mr. Frick's house then is the 
direct successor of the original building, designed 
by Richard M. Hunt, whose memorial was fit- 
tingly placed opposite on the edge of the park. 

The ample lot provided an ideal location for 
the Frick house and gallery, designed by 
Messrs. Carrere and Hastings, with special ref- 
erence to its artistic intention. The gallery is 
the low wing at the upper corner. Built of 
white marble, its simple elegance is relieved by 
four lunettes in sculpture, done by Sherry Fry, 
Philip Martiny, Charles Keck, and Attiho 
Piccirilli. 

When the cautious commissioners, Gouverneur 
Morris, Simeon de Witt, and John Rutherford, 
after four years' prodigious effort, produced the 
"gridiron" plan, which the city has been con- 
demned to follow since the fruition of these 
master minds in 1811, no allowance was made 
for a city park. There is a curious and fatal 
consistency in the growth of New York from 
earliest times. One might have supposed that 
the appointment of a commission of this char- 
acter would have resulted most beneficently for 
the development of the city. Gouverneur Morris 
was one of the most interesting characters of the 



324 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Revolutionary era; living abroad for many years, 
as he did, he must have noted the importance of 
plan in the beauty of foreign cities, a fact which 
Washington felt instinctively and impressed upon 
the character of the national capital. His op- 
portunities for cultivation were extraordinary, 
and we know that his own house, Morrisania in 
the Bronx, profited largely by the knowledge of 
architecture and interior decoration which he had 
imbibed during his long residence in France. Yet 
he was one of those three who rejected " fanciful 
forms " that, while embellishing a plan, they 
felt would interfere with the erection of straight- 
sided and right-angled houses that for a practical 
city seemed to them most desirable. 

" It may be a matter of surprise," they said 
in their report, " that so few vacant spaces have 
been left, and those so small, for the benefit of 
fresh air and consequent preservation of health. 
. . . Had New York been situated near httle 
streams like the Seine or the Thames," was their 
reasoning, " a great number of ample spaces might 
have been necessary, but Manhattan, being em- 
braced by large arms of the sea, neither from the 
point of view of health nor pleasure was such a 
plan necessary. . . . To some," they remarked, 
"it may be a matter of surprise that the whole 




INTERIOR METKOPOLJTAN ML'SKLM (PAbL 331) 



HEAD OF BALZAC, BY RODIN 
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM 




CENTRAL PARK EAST 325 

island has not been laid out as a city. To others 
it may be a subject of merriment that the com- 
missioners have provided space for a greater 
population than is collected at any spot this side 
of China. They have, in this respect, been gov- 
erned by the shape of the ground. It is not 
improbable that considerable numbers may be 
collected at Harlem before the high hills to the 
southward of it shall be built upon as a city; it is 
improbable that for centuries to come the grounds 
north of Harlem Flat will be covered with houses. 
... To have gone further," they added, " might 
have furnished materials to the pernicious spirit 
of speculation." 

This was little over a century ago! Even 
when, in 1856, the city purchased the eight or 
nine hundred acres now included in Central 
Park, for a pubhc recreation ground, the six 
millions spent upon it was considered a mad 
extravagance. Central Park was opened about 
1859. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert 
Vaux were the landscape architects, and their 
work was considered wonderful in its day. 

Immediately upon the completion of the park 
a new civic consciousness awoke in the people, 
and within ten years the Metropolitan Museum 
began to be talked of. In 1871 the State Legis- 



326 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

lature passed a bill appropriating the sum of 
half a million of dollars to erect a suitable build- 
ing in the park. The idea of locating an art 
museum in Central Park originated with Andrew 
H. Green, the father of the park, and the museum 
now stands on the spot selected by him for the 
purpose. But the actual housing of the museum 
there, in a building erected and owned by the 
city, and the lease defining the relation between 
the museum and the city, does credit to the far- 
sighted policy of the public officials, who at 
this time represented the city, and who curi- 
ously enough were none other than the no- 
torious politicians, William M. Tweed and Peter 
B. Sweeny. 

Meanwhile the museum had been organized by 
a little band of public-spirited men, in 1870, and 
was sustained by their private purses. The initia- 
tive had come from the art committee of the 
Union League Club and the officers of the meet- 
ing called on November 23, 1869, to consider the 
founding of the museum represented the intel- 
lectual and artistic leadership of New York. 
Among the founders were William Cullen 
Bryant, president of the Century Association; 
Daniel Huntington, president of the National 
Academy of Design; Richard M. Hunt, presi- 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 327 

dent of the New York chapter of the American 
Institute of Architects; Dr. Barnard, president 
of Columbia College; and Dr. Henry W. Bel- 
lows, foremost among New York's public-spirited 
clergymen. The city government was repre- 
sented by the presence of Andrew H. Green, 
comptroller of Central Park, and Henry G. 
Stebbins, president of the Central Park Com- 
mission. The Committee of Fifty, into whose 
hands the project was committed by this meeting, 
added to this earher body the foremost business 
men of the period. 

The committee set out to found a museum that 
should contain complete collections of objects 
illustrative of the history of "all the arts, whether 
industrial, educational, or recreative, which can 
give value to such an institution." They set 
themselves what seems, in the light of later 
developments, a modest goal, aiming to raise by 
personal subscription the sum of $250,000 — about 
two-thirds of the present annual administrative 
expenses. But their utmost efforts succeeded in 
raising, during the first year, less than half that 
sum. With such small financial beginnings the 
growth of the museum in less than fifty years 
seems almost incredible; for besides its exten- 
sive building and its priceless collections, its 



328 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

endowment fund for purchase now exceeds 
$10,000,000. 

The history of the museum divides itself into 
three periods: the first, during which it had to 
depend upon voluntary service in its management, 
ended in 1879, when General di Cesnola was 
elected as its first salaried director; the second 
period ended with his death, in 1904; and the 
third began with the election of J. Pierpont 
Morgan as president, which opened to the 
museum vastly larger resources than it had 
known up to this time. 

During the first epoch the museum had no 
permanent abiding place. Its first exhibition 
was installed in the Dodworth Building, 681 
Fifth Avenue, a private residence that had been 
altered for Allen Dodworth's Dancing Academy, 
and exceptionally well constructed for the pur- 
pose. "A skyhght let into the ceiling of the 
large hall where the poetry of motion had been 
taught to so many of the young men and maidens 
of New York," wrote a contemporary reviewer, 
" converted it into a picture gallery." The 
Cooper Union had given storage to the nucleus 
of the museum's collections, which consisted of 
one hundred and seventy-five paintings, principally 
Dutch and Flemish, but including representative 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 329 

works of the Italian, French, Enghsh, and Span- 
ish schools, secured for the new organization by 
William T. Blodgett, assisted by the museum's 
first president, John Taylor Johnson. Owing to 
the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War Mr. 
Blodgett had been able to secure, on most ad- 
vantageous terms, two collections; one belonging 
to a well-known citizen of Brussels, and the other 
to a distinguished collector of Paris. Mr. Blod- 
gett acted on his own initiative and purchased the 
collections at his own risk, exempting the trustees 
of the museum from any obligation to take the 
pictures should they not approve the purchase. 
Mr. Johnson immediately assumed half the re- 
sponsibility of the purchase, which was, however, 
ratified by the trustees, and became the property 
of the museum, in 1871. 

In 1873 the headquarters of the museum were 
moved to the Douglas Cruger mansion, 128 West 
Fourteenth Street, interest in the movement being 
stimulated by the display of a part of the Cesnola 
Collection of more than ten thousand objects 
extracted from Phoenician, Greek, Assyrian, and 
Egyptian tombs by General di Cesnola during his 
six years' residence, as United States consul, at 
Cyprus. 

After ten years' nomadic existence the original 



330 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

red building, still standing as the nucleus of the 
present pile on the Avenue, bordering Central 
Park, was opened with impressive ceremonies, 
by Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United 
States, in 1880. The occasion was rendered the 
more brilliant by the placing, for the first time, 
of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection of 
paintings, one of the earliest bequests to the 
galleries. 

The architecture of the original building was 
never considered a feature of the museum, in 
which every consideration was sacrificed to in- 
ternal convenience. The committee of architects 
appointed to superintend the design included 
Russell Sturgis, Richard Morris Hunt, and 
James Renwick; the chief architect of the 
building was Calvert Vaux, the landscape archi- 
tect, who with Olmsted had laid out Central 
Park, and either singly or with some associate 
planned Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Riverside, and 
Morningside Parks. Jacob Wrey Mould's name 
appears on the working drawings, and the Eng- 
lish architect of All Souls' Church was no doubt 
the chief designer of those plans which the mu- 
seum officials found far " too magnificent and 
elaborate," though he is little credited in the 
official reports of the building. 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 331 

The museum, once established, grew rapidly 
and the first building was soon found inadequate 
to house the increasing collections. In 1894, one 
year before his death, Richard Morris Hunt de- 
signed plans for the new building that was to 
surround the first structure on all sides; and in 
1902 the central portion of the east front was 
completed, by Mr. Hunt's son, Richard Howland 
Hunt, George B. Post acting as consulting 
architect. This portion of the building departed 
from the original red brick of Mould's design, 
and was built of Indiana limestone, its fa9ade 
enriched by medallions and caryatides designed 
and executed by Karl Bitter. The medallions 
bear the heads of certain old masters selected by 
the building committee — Bramante, Diirer, Mi- 
chelangelo, Raphael, Velasquez, and Rembrandt, 
while the caryatides represent Sculpture, Archi- 
tecture, Painting, and Music. 

For all the new wings, added during the last 
period of the museum's growth, McKim, Mead, 
and White were appointed architects, and these 
are being carried out. Carrere and Hastings too 
have had their part in the construction of the 
museum, having designed the interior of the East 
Wing for the installation of the Bishop Collection 
of Jade. The room reproduces, in substance, Mr. 



332 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Bishop's ballroom, in which, previous to its trans- 
ference to the museum, the extensive collection 
of jade was displayed. 

The scope of the museum is comprehensive, 
ranging from the earliest beginnings to the latest 
word in foreign or native work. There is no 
vagueness in the display of the collections, which 
give not merely illustrations, but are broadly 
outlined in the synthetic method, the gaps con- 
stantly filled. Henry Gurdon Marquand's con- 
stant gifts to the museum during the thirteen 
years of his presidency included many practical 
details, such as the collection of sculptural casts. 
Renaissance metal work, porcelain, and manu- 
scripts; but most important of all was the pres- 
entation of his collection of thirty-five paintings, 
among which are some of the best known and 
most esteemed treasures of the institution, in- 
cluding Van Dyck's " James Stuart," Rem- 
brandt's " Portrait of a Man," and Vermeer's 
" Young Woman at a Casement." 

J. Pierpont Morgan's princely giving to the 
museum, of which he was president from 1904 until 
his death, covered many fields, of which the most 
important was his gift of the Georges Hoentschel 
Collection of objects of French decorative art 
of the eighteenth century, unmatched in any 




PORTRAIT OF HEXRV G. MARQUAND, B 
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM (PAGE ;i;i2) 



JOHN SINGER SARGENT 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 333 

public museum, and providing a large and valu- 
able nucleus for the collection of European dec- 
orative arts. The disappointment of the with- 
drawal of the greater part of his loans to 
the museum, after his death, was handsomely 
atoned for by his son's gift of the clou of the 
collection of paintings, Raphael's " Colonna 
Madonna," which had for years been one of the 
chief ornaments of the National Gallery. For- 
tunately the famous Fragonard panels, lent to 
the museum by Mr. Morgan, were bought by 
Henry C. Frick, and installed in his Fifth Avenue 
house, in a room designed to contain them, so 
that they are not lost to New York. 

The recent accession of the Altman Collection 
of old masters, porcelains, etc., places the 
museum upon a footing with the galleries of 
Europe in the schools represented. The Rodin 
Collection is a feature of the modern department 
of sculpture ; the George A. Hearn Collection has 
its important place in the development of Ameri- 
can painting, with particular reference to the con- 
temporary school; while the department of early 
American portraiture is rich and important. 

The rocking, swaying Fifty-ninth Street cross- 
town car, in its shuttle-like passage east and west, 
skirts the boundaries of the erstwhile villages of 



334 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Yorkville and Bloomingdale, and marks a line 
of recession, a snapping of all sympathy and 
interest between adjacent sections, intensely char- 
acteristic of New York, where the early settle- 
ments, absorbed and incorporated in the growth 
of the city, maintain throughout the island a 
marked individuahty. This individuality, perhaps 
it should be said, expresses itself not so much in 
externals — though that too — as in the psychologi- 
cal attitude. 

Sixty years ago there were but two main thor- 
oughfares in the upper part of the island — the 
Boston Post Road on the east side and the 
Bloomingdale Road on the west. There was no 
traffic on the Avenue save the drovers who fol- 
lowed the old dirt road on their way to the 
Bowery market. From the Boston Post Road, 
long lanes led to the residences of gentlemen, who 
had country seats on the East River; and similar 
lanes led from the old Bloomingdale Road to 
the estates on the Hudson. 

Of these old houses at least two remain, in 
excellent preservation, to tell the tale of former 
style — Claremont in Bloomingdale and " Smith's 
Folly," or the Jeremiah Towle house, in York- 
ville, near the end of the Queensborough Bridge. 
Bloomingdale may have been beautiful in the 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 335 

correct suburban fashion, on the high banks of 
the noble Hudson; but Yorkville had mystery 
and interest of a richer flavour, commanding the 
passageway to the Sound, bordering on the tur- 
bulent waters of Hell Gate, and overlooking the 
islands in the East River. 

The boundaries of Yorkville have been vari- 
ously described. From all accounts the nucleus 
of the village seems to have lain along the old 
Post Road between Eighty-third and Eighty- 
ninth Streets; while its expansions included the 
district east of Fifth Avenue to the river from 
Fifty-ninth to One Hundredth Street. The 
nomenclature of the features of the East River 
shore is romantic and suggestive. Kip's Bay 
indented the eastern bank of the river at about 
the location of the present ferry shps at Thirty- 
fourth Street; it was here that the British landed, 
when they took possession of the city, on Sep- 
tember 15, 1776, while the quick-witted wife of 
the owner of Incleberg prepared a feast for their 
detention. Until 1851 the old farmhouse of 
Jacob Kip, who gave his name to the bay, stood 
on Second Avenue near Thirty-fifth Street. 

During two wars with England fortifications 
occupied the vicinity of the rocky cove on the 
eastern edge of the Duffore Farm, near Forty- 



336 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

fifth Street, known as Turtle Bay. Its high, pre- 
cipitous banks made it a safe harbour for small 
craft, and the British established here a magazine 
of military stores during the troublous times pre- 
ceding the outbreak of the Revolution. This was 
raided by a chosen band of the Sons of Liberty, 
led by John Lamb and Marinus Willett. 

Horace Greeley's country home looked out over 
Turtle Bay, a rambling frame structure, buried 
in shrubbery and shaded by fruit trees, and only 
accessible by a long lane turning in from the 
Boston Road, down which rattled the hourly 
stage to the city. Time has removed this inter- 
esting landmark, together with the historic Beek- 
man house, which stood for more than a hundred 
years, overlooking Turtle Bay, west of Avenue 
A, near Fifty-first Street. James Beekman built 
the house in 1763; it was a plain but massive 
structure, with two stories and a basement, and 
its gardens extended to the Post Road. Clinton 
and Carleton occupied it as headquarters during 
the Revolution, in which it figured prominently, 
as the scene of the condemnation of Nathan Hale; 
and beneath its roof Andre passed his last night 
in New York before setting out for West Point 
upon the errand which cost him his life. 

We have in the journal of Madame Riedesel, 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 337 

wife of the Hessian general who surrendered at 
Saratoga, a description of the Beekman house, 
which she occupied in 1780. " The spacious 
rooms," she says, *' were adorned with black 
marble mantels bearing elaborate carvings of 
scroll and foliage. The fireplaces were orna- 
mented with Dutch tiles, representing Scriptural 
subjects." Amongst the quaint relics of the 
New York Historical Society is the drawing- 
room mantel, with some of the Dutch Scripture 
tiles, saved from the old Beekman house, torn 
down in 1874. 

The site of the estate still retains a certain 
curious character. A steep incline leads up the 
hill, and Beekman Place preserves the historic 
name and commands an extensive view of the 
East River from a high bluff, for the river shore 
is bold and rocky, and the current too swift to 
admit of docks. 

The old Shot Tower, near the ferry to Black- 
well's Island, keeps vigil over a disordered board- 
yard, concealing every trace of the cultivated 
grounds which surrounded the " Spring Valley 
Farmhouse," built about two hundred years ago, 
and, until recently demolished, known as the 
oldest building on Manhattan. A perfect speci- 
men of Dutch architecture of two centuries ago 



338 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the house was built by David Duffore, or de Voor, 
to whom the Spring Valley farm was granted by 
Governor Andros, in 1677. After the Revolution 
it bore the names of Odell and Arden, and later 
became the Brevoort estate. The curious brick 
tower near the ferry slip looked down, in its 
day, upon the sleek property of the Dutch settler. 
Erected in 1821, it replaced a tower of Revolu- 
tionary days, and was used during the Civil 
War. De Voor's Mill Stream, or Saw Mill 
Creek, ran from the high ground of upper Cen- 
tral Park, and was crossed at Seventy-seventh 
and Fifty-second Streets by two " Kissing 
Bridges." 

In close proximity to one of the detested gas 
tanks of modern city architecture, near the ter- 
minal of the picturesque Queensborough Bridge, 
on an eminence from which the streets have been 
levelled at any cost to surrounding property, 
stands a quaint house with two wings and a 
receding entrance between them. Rough, heavy 
stones indicate ancient masonry, and the quiet 
pastoral air of retirement presents as pretty a 
paradox as you will find in rambles about New 
York. Still strangely occupied as a residence, 
the house has served in various capacities since 
more than a century and a quarter ago it was 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 339 

erected as a stable to the manor house of Peter 
Pra Van Sant, who owned the farm, extending 
from the old Post Road to the river. 

Accounts of this interesting rehc differ, some 
say that in 1795 the whole Van Sant property- 
passed to Colonel WiUiam Smith, the son-in-law 
of President Adams, a soldier of Revolutionary- 
fame — adjutant general under Lafayette, aide- 
de-camp to Washington; and, after the close of 
the war, secretary of the legation to England, 
where he met and married Abigail, the accom- 
plished daughter of John Adams, then minister 
to Great Britain. Others say that Smith built 
the house in 1799 as a present to his bride, 
sparing no expense in the construction and ap- 
pointments, but that before it was well finished 
Smith failed in business, and this gave to the 
house the name " Smith's Folly." At all events 
the property passed to Monmouth C. Hart when 
Smith was obhged to sell, and Hart completed it 
and opened it as a road-house, in which capacity 
it served until 1830. It was readily accessible by 
means of one of the long lanes turning in from 
the Boston Post Road, and formed an important 
stopping place for travellers in the early days. 
Its character is picturesque, and Jeremiah Towle, 
who frequented it in its tavern days, was so 



340 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

pleased with its unusual features that when it 
came upon the market, on the death of Hart, in 
1834, he bought the house for his residence. It 
was occupied by his family as late as 1906. 

The old Schermerhorn farmhouse, until 1914 
a landmark of this region, dated back to colonial 
days. It was built in 1847 by Symon Schermer- 
horn, one of the old Dutch family of that name 
settled in Albany. Standing on a bluff, over- 
looking the East River, on land now included 
in the grounds of the Rockefeller Institute, the 
old house bordered Jones' Wood, the ninety- 
acre farm of Samuel Provoost, the first bishop of 
New York and president of Columbia College. 
The bishop had a cousin, David Provoost, a Revo- 
lutionary soldier with a rare talent for smuggling 
which won him the nickname of " Ready Money 
Provoost." He used to hide his booty in " Smug- 
glers' Cave " on the shore of the bishop's farm, 
or in a cave at Hallett's Point, Astoria. 

There was an old house at Horn's Hook, 
belonging to Mrs. Provoost, taken by Archibald 
Gracie, who built on the site the so-called 
" Gracie House," now included in the East 
River Park. This house in its day saw inter- 
esting life and extended princely hospitality, for 
its owner was a merchant and shipowner of 



CENTRAL PARK EAST 341 

wealth and had excellent connections in this 
country; his son married the daughter of Oliver 
Wolcott. Josiah Quincy describes a dinner which 
he attended in the Gracie House in 1805. Wash- 
ington Irving was a frequent visitor, and the 
exiled king of France, Louis Philippe, is said 
to have been entertained here. 

Before the rocky bottom of the river was blown 
up at the point where the Harlem and East River 
tides collide in their rapid action, the waters of 
Hell Gate were a formidable feature of the 
navigation at this point. The Gracie House over- 
looked this prospect, and Quincy speaks of the 
shores of Long Island as full of cultivated lands 
and elegant country seats. John Jacob Astor's 
villa adjoined the Gracie estate, and Washington 
Irving describes this delightful retreat, " opposite 
Hell Gate," where he retouched and perfected 
his " Astoria," written at Astor's request. 

The spectacular entrance of the Queensborough 
Bridge, uniting New York with Ravenswood, in 
the borough of Queens, has made terrific changes 
in this once peaceful locality. One of the most 
cruel is the partial destruction of that charming 
realization of Pomander's Walk, the Riverview 
Terrace, a row of dwellings built directly on the 
top of the rocks facing the river, and cut off from 



342 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK ^ 

all contamination by gates at each end, guarded 
by a private watchman. Perhaps I feel towards 
this pretty block with especial tenderness, from 
personal associations, for a certain house in the 
terrace, held by an early schoolmate of my father, 
figures in my earliest and latest recollections of 
New York. This charming old gentleman has 
been one of the stoutest defenders of his rights 
against the invasion of the enterprises connected 
with the construction and maintenance of the 
bridge, which has taken to itself half of the 
houses. The bridge has brought many annoy- 
ances but contributes an amazing note to an 
already exhilarating view of the river, the island, 
and the passing craft. \ 



XVII 
CENTRAL PARK WEST 

Bloemendaal 

Broadway in its pushing American way has 
gobbled up all the pretty highways of the ancient 
town and outlying villages which it overtook in its 
reach for the far north. Its ambition was not 
satisfied until it made good Lafayette's facetious 
question concerning its ultimate destination — " Do 
you expect," asked he, when shown the plans for 
continuing the main thoroughfare of the city be- 
yond Madison Square, " that Broadway will reach 
to Albany?" 

In its steady march towards the accomplishment 
of that feat, the original Heere Straat was early 
lost in the Breedeweg of the Dutch settlers, while 
in later years the Kingsbridge Road, designating 
the old Post Road to Albany, has disappeared 
from the modern map in company with Blooming- 
dale Road, which it joined at One Hundred and 
Forty-seventh Street, continuing along the west- 
ern route of the island. Broadway supplants all 

343 



344 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

of these — appropriates the ready-made pieces and 
links them together — and by that summary process 
becomes — vain boast — " the longest modern street 
in the world." 

Bloemendaal, which bestowed its charmingly 
suggestive name — the vale of flowers — borrowed 
from a beautiful village near old Haarlem, upon 
the roadway that traversed its tract of fine estates, 
extended vaguely in Dutch days from the out- 
skirts of the Bossen Bouwerie to Claremont, and 
contained a number of stately mansions, of which 
scarce one stands to-day. I remember with what 
vigour of impression a very old lady of my ac- 
quaintance, not so many years ago, described her 
sensations on discovering that an apartment house 
in which she was living, on the west side of the 
park, was built on the very site of her father's 
estate in Bloomingdale, a rich farm that extended 
to the river. Here she had spent a happy youth 
in the days when Spring Street bounded the north- 
ern limit of the actual city; and here, by the 
caprice of fortune, she was condemned to pass a 
colourful old age, " boxed up," as it were, on her 
own father's territory, now strangely perverted 
to the modern idea of living, " as they call it," for 
living to her had meant, in this same locality, a 
vastly richer, more expansive state. 



CENTRAL PARK WEST 345 

The picturesque Bloomingdale Road was opened 
in 1703, extending from Madison Square to One 
Hundred and Fourteenth Street, and following 
in a large measure the line of present Broadway. 
Included in the district covered were the small 
hamlets of Harsenville and Striker's Bay, while 
the village of Bloomingdale proper centred about 
One Hundredth Street. Up to the outbreak of 
the Civil War each of these hamlets had a sem- 
blance of village life, of which vestiges remained, 
indeed, until all local personahty was swallowed up 
in the " improvements " following in the wake of 
the elevated road, whose immense effect was to 
annihilate distance and to destroy independence 
in these former centres by making all look easily 
and profitably to New York's city market, as 
the logical source of interest and supply. 

The peculiar conflict of incompatible neighbour- 
hoods that occurs at Columbus Circle finds its 
most agreeable outlet in the three smart blocks, 
known as " Central Park South," that contain 
some of the oldest and most comfortable of New 
York's apartment houses, as well as the most 
modern and exotic of studio buildings. " The 
Gainsborough," built by a syndicate of artists, is 
readily distinguishable for its interesting front, built 
largely of glass, to afford light for the painters. 



346 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

but allowing also generous space for the handsome 
Mercer tiles, of which the ornamental upper 
fa9ade is constructed. These tiles are the unique 
product of Henry C. Mercer, of Doylestown, 
Pennsylvania, who, having established himself in 
the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch country, has 
devoted a lifetime of study and research to redis- 
covering the process of pottery and tile-making, 
which the industrious German settlers had im- 
ported and practised over a century ago. 

The great charm of the building rests, however, 
upon the " Festival Procession," a joyous frieze 
in four parts, extending across the front, and 
which, including the bust of Gainsborough over 
the entrance, is the work of Isidore Konti. 

The much discussed monument to " the valiant 
seamen who perished in the Maine " occupies an 
important setting at the Merchants' Gate to Cen- 
tral Park, just off Columbus Circle, and repre- 
sents the combined invention of H. Van Buren 
Magonigle, architect, and Attilio Piccirilli, sculp- 
tor. Comparatively unknown to the outside world, 
every sculptor values the exquisite workmanship 
of the " Piccirilli Brothers," from whose studio 
and workshop in the Bronx has issued many a 
masterpiece of marble carving. There are six 
brothers, all of whom learned the trade carried 











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Copyright by ludoie Kontt 



DETAIL OF FRIKZE. GAINSBOROUGH BUILDINC 
ISIDORE KOXTI, SCULPTOR 



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DETAIL OF FRIEZE, GAINSBOROUGH BUILDIN( 
ISIDORE KONTI, SCULPTOR (PAGE 346) 



iht by Isidore Konti 



CENTRAL PARK WEST 347 

by them to such high perfection; while Attiho and 
Furio went further and became accomplished 
sculptors themselves. In the Maine Monument, 
therefore, as well as the Firemen's Memorial on 
the Riverside Drive, one sees the creation of At- 
tilio Piccirilli, carried out by the brothers in their 
most accomplished style. 

Civic indifference towards sculpture reached 
a sort of climax with the unveiling of the Maine 
Monument and the more than usually stupid snap- 
shot criticisms of the press roused a storm of pro- 
test from the sculptors of the country, demanding 
intelligent criticism as the first step towards ad- 
vancement in every phase of public betterment. 
The Maine Monument suffered more than most 
from a perverse misconception of its intention, 
from certain railing criticisms and heedless witti- 
cisms of the fun-loving paragraphers, who do so 
much to shape public opinion. 

Piccirilli and Magonigle won the contest for the 
monument over forty-six competitors, and for the 
sculptor, at least, the work became a labour of 
love, for he spent over twelve years in toiling at 
his task, in creating from the marble these sympa- 
thetically chiselled figures, among which are some 
— notably the reclining representations of the At- 
lantic and Pacific Oceans — that stand amongst 



348 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the best sculpture that the city offers. The criti- 
cism has been made, with some justice, that the 
architectural mass is too great and the crowning 
note inadequate, but sculptors have rallied to the 
defence of Piccirilli, and claimed for him the con- 
sideration deserved for his " high-minded conse- 
cration, and skill in the handling of marble, here- 
tofore imknown in this country." 

Promenades in the arid region west of Columbus 
Circle, made formidable and forbidding by the 
heavy obtrusion of the elevated road, which, mak- 
ing its way through narrow streets, so darkens and 
threatens the passage practically condemned to its 
use, lead the persevering pedestrian to a strange 
and gloomy church, whose immense importance 
and interest is comparatively unknown and un- 
appreciated. 

Where Ninth Avenue merges its identity with 
Columbus Avenue, behind the rush and roar of 
two lines of elevated trains, stands the substantial, 
stone structure of the Paulist Fathers' Church, 
one of the most romantically interesting and in- 
herently foreign of the churches of New York. 
The order of the Paulist Fathers, the sole religious 
body of priests of American origin, was founded 
in 1858, by five converts to the Roman Catholic 
faith. These were Isaac Hecker, of the Brook 



CENTRAL PARK WEST 349 

Farm community of transcendentalists ; Clarence 
Walworth, Francis Baker, George Deshon, and 
Augustine Hewit. Founded for parochial, mis- 
sionary, and educational work, the Paulists do not 
take the usual vows of religious orders, but, pro- 
fessing to follow the example of the apostle Paul, 
they live the hfe imposed by such vows in absolute 
strictness. 

The Church of the Paulist Fathers represents 
in its impressive interior the results of many ex- 
periments in decoration. O'Rourke was the first 
architect of the building, which was about ten 
years under construction, the clergy having first 
occupied it in January, 1885. The first blow to 
the church was the erection of the elevated road 
across its face before the edifice was well under 
way. Things had gone too far to make possible 
a change of location, and the only thing to be done 
was to make such alterations in the original plan 
as would amehorate the painful conditions imposed 
by the noisy railroad. The architect had con- 
ceived it as a Gothic church, but the exigencies 
of the situation carried the builder away from the 
original idea and the result is something between 
Gothic and Romanesque. The Gothic windows 
that were to have lined its sides were done away 
with, in order to eliminate as much as possible the 



350 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

noise of the passing trains, and this has made place 
inside for the altars in the side aisles, now a feature 
of the interior; while outside it was intended to 
fill the depressions, indicating the place of the 
windows, with sculpture. 

Father Hecker, who was the executive force in 
the conception of the church, had unbounded am- 
bitions for the beauty of his scheme. It was his 
purpose to have the decorations throughout under- 
taken by the famous trio of artists of whom we 
have talked so much — White, La Farge, and Saint 
Gaudens — and the interior owes its undoubted 
distinction to the enthusiasm of the three, though 
La Farge is there most in evidence. 

Stanford White designed the fa^a^e, and built 
the high altar and the two side altars to the right 
and left, dedicated to St. Joseph and the Virgin. 
The high altar, in Siena marble, onyx, and ala- 
baster, dominates the dusk interior. The design 
is pure, and parts of the alabaster are over- 
laid with gold to give warmth; while a charming 
variety in its severe character is introduced in the 
three adoring angels, in bronze, which surmount 
the whole. These are the work of Frederick Mac- 
Monnies, and his first commission. Inconspicuous 
as they are, they show Wliite's infinite care in the 
detail of his work, and his appreciative use of the 




THE PACIFIC, DETAIL OF MAINE 
BY ATTILIO PICCIRILLI 



THE MAINE MONUMENT. COLUMBUS CIRCLE 
H. VAN EUREN MAGONIGLE, .VRCHITECT 
ATTILIO PICCIRILLI. SCULPTOR (PAGE 347) 




CENTRAL PARK WEST 351 

young sculptors just back from European study. 
Another handsome detail is the exquisite bronze 
lamp, in the design of four angels supporting a 
globe, by Philip Martiny. 

La Farge's work in the church, though already 
prolific, was to have been much more extensive; 
he was to have made all the windows, and many 
panels for the spaces, now bare, left by the elim- 
ination of the windows of the clerestory. As it is 
his work may be readily distinguished, and though 
much has since been done to detract from the 
beauty of his unified scheme of decoration, the in- 
terior stands an imposing monument to his genius. 

La Farge at the time that the Paulist Fathers 
called his talents into requisition was just back 
from Japan, and very much under the Japanese 
influence. The entire colour scheme of the church 
is his, and he made the best of the decorations as 
well as the twenty-two Romanesque windows that 
give to the upper part of the church its distinctive 
character. La Farge and White made many 
changes in the architecture, both apparent and 
real, in an effort to do away with the pointed 
Gothic of the original plan. It is rather amusing 
to notice the trick by which, in these windows, 
La Farge deceives the eye; the geometric design, 
of which the basic colour is brown, is carried out 



352 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

in rich blues and yellow greens, and follows an 
apparently curved line, whereas in reality the 
window is pointed and the artist has cleverly con- 
cealed the point by filling in the top with indigo 
glass. Considered just as colour, the windows are 
splendid, though not strictly ecclesiastic; the two 
jewelled windows in the sanctuary are particularly 
effective and characteristic, and were to have bal- 
anced the three central figure windows, designed 
by La Farge but unfortunately never placed. 
The conventional substitutes are of foreign manu- 
facture. 

La Farge planned to decorate the whole of the 
sanctuary and finished the composition on the left- 
hand side, consisting of " The Angel of the Moon " 
surrounded by five lesser luminaries in circular 
panels, as well as the five corresponding designs 
for the opposite wall, whose central figure, " The 
Angel of the Sun," is the work of an alien hand 
and disastrously out of tone with the rest. The 
priests evidently had troubles of their own with 
their temperamental decorator and one can build 
up the situation, with all its strains, from the ex- 
isting facts. La Farge made " The Angel of the 
Sun " and two nine-foot panels for the sanctuary, 
but they were never placed. Even when he of- 
fered them to the church for the price of installa- 



CENTRAL PARK WEST 353 

tion, they were not accepted. After his death his 
executor offered them for a nominal sum and they 
were refused; and when, after his death, they 
appeared in the catalogue of the sale of the 
painter's effects, no effort was made to secure 
them, though they brought an insignificant sum. 

Fortunately they did not go far afield. The 
Brooklyn Institute acquired them, and they hang 
in the central corridor of the Museum, where, 
splendidly lighted, they may be studied and ap- 
preciated, though it should be remembered that 
they were painted for a shadowy interior, and not 
for close inspection, but rather in a large way that 
they might carry well. Some day, perhaps, the 
Bacchante-like atrocity that usurps the place in- 
tended for the true Angel of the Sun may come 
down and La Farge's figure be given its proper 
setting. 

Before taking orders. Father Searle, one of the 
congregation of Paulist priests, was a distinguished 
astronomer, and it was according to his idea that 
La Farge decorated the vaulted blue ceiling with 
the stars and planets in their true astronomic re- 
lation, as they appeared on the night of St. Paul's 
conversion. This ceiling, which from the artistic 
point of view is rather a failure, La Farge took 
pains to leave in obscurity, another effect gained 



354 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

by the dark blue tops to the Romanesque windows. 
La Farge's work in the church dates from about 
1886. 

Taken all in all, and including the tragic mis- 
takes of the later decoration, all of which is most 
unworthy and trivial, the Church of the Paulist 
Fathers is one of the most interesting of the dec- 
orated churches of New York. Wandering about 
in the dusk of its chapels, one discovers many 
things which show that the intention of the donors 
and of the priests was for the best. Robert Reid 
painted the panel in the first chapel on the left, 
representing the Martyrdom of St. Paul; opposite 
is a Crucifixion by the Marquise Wentworth, a 
pupil of Bonnat; in the Annunciation Chapel is 
a charming figure of the Virgin, by Bela Pratt; 
and in a corner near the south entrance is a bronze 
replica of Michelangelo's Madonna, of Bruges. 
The inlaid baptistry was the gift of Augustin 
Daly. 

But apart from its beautiful or interesting con- 
tents, the church has a deeply religious atmos- 
phere, a character of its own, and an air of having 
been used and loved. I am sure that it has a place 
in this strange, paradoxical community in which 
it finds itself, that it offers itself as a tangible 
symbol of consolation to the workers who hurry 



CENTRAL PARK WEST 355 

in and out of its hospitable doors. The feet of the 
little Bruges Madonna and Infant have been al- 
most kissed away, and the old wooden floor is 
dusty with the tread of worshippers. The interior 
is strangely vast, strangely silent, and filled with 
suggestion; bare and remote of aspect, it is remi- 
niscent of certain gloomy churches of Italy, and 
this bareness and pervading sense of solitude is 
not without a very definite and appealing charm. 



XVIII 

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 

Not the least of the charms presented to the 
loiterer by the district known as Columbia 
Heights is the delightful means of approach. 
When one turns through many busy byways, from 
the banal city straggling northwest from Columbus 
Circle into the romantic windings of the Riverside 
Drive, the whole face of nature assumes a different 
aspect. This priceless view of the Hudson, thus 
revealed, saved by some miracle from the base 
uses of commerce, yet terribly menaced by rail- 
road encroachments, as we are daily reminded, is 
one of the enchanting reserves of New York, the 
one instance, as one might say, in which advantage 
has been taken of the inherent beauty of the island 
formation. This tantalizing sample of what might 
have been done for the protection of the whole 
circumference stretches away from the turn-in 
at Seventy-second Street through Washington 
Heights and Inwood to the brink of Spuyten 
Duyvil Creek. 

356 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 357 

The top of the lumbering motor bus, in all winds 
and weathers, is preeminently the place from which 
to enjoy the unfolding loveliness, both of nature 
and of art, presented by our curious, conglomerate 
city as the feature of its northwestern boundary. 
One should know it well and know it at all seasons 
to get the full flavour of the view, so charming 
in the morning, so dazzling at mid-day, so minor 
in its Whistlerian envelopment at dusk, so brilliant 
in its contrasts at night. 

From the height of the heavy vehicle one towers 
above the hill-bound river, which lies flat at the 
bottom of the gorge its course has cut through 
the surrounding hills, like a fine old chart. The 
craft is different from the panting, steaming 
things rushing distractedly about through the 
waters of the East River and the Battery. It 
belongs to the pleasure-boat variety — the sloops, 
yachts, and launches of the leisure class — and it 
lies mostly at anchor, with a peacef ulness ; while, 
at rare intervals, the Albany boat slips lightly 
through the waters, with its freight of sightseers; 
for the palisades of the Hudson are still amongst 
the wonders of the western world. 

In summer the bus route lies through the tree 
tops, the intervals of the drive happily relieved 
by fine sculpture, placed admirably in the grassy 



358 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

slopes that link the Riverside Park with the ter- 
races of the residences and palatial apartment 
houses facing the river, making distinguished notes 
of interest. Franz Sigel, the German-American 
general, who rendered valuable service to the 
North in the Civil War, is honoured in the bronze 
equestrian statue, mounted on a simple granite 
pedestal at the head of a flight of steps leading to 
One Hundred and Sixth Street. The statue is 
by Karl Bitter, finished and placed ten years ago. 
Jeanne d'Arc has been so adequately sculptured 
as an equestrienne by her compatriots, Dubois and 
Fremiet, that their portraits impose a certain style 
upon any later sculptor attempting a representa- 
tion of the legendary figure. Anna Vaughan 
Hyatt's monument to her memory, forming 
one of the sculptural features of the Drive, 
contributes, however, a remarkably compact and 
sculpturesque idea of the French heroine in her 
sainted character. The statue has the Gothic 
spirit, the decorative quality of the French monu- 
ments of the period to which it relates; its model- 
ling is virile and strong, while to the whole har- 
mony of effect the unusual pedestal brings a 
decisive character both satisfying and pleasing. 

To these two embelhshments of the terraces 
sloping down to the Drive, Piccirilli and 




EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF JEANNE D'ARC, BY ANNA VAUGHAN HYATT 
RIVERSIDE DRIVE (PAGE 358) 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 359 

Magonigle, more happily in combination this 
time, contribute a third — the handsome monu- 
ment to the " Firemen " of New York, dedicated 
in 1913, and containing much beautiful sculpture. 
The monument is in the form of a sarcophagus, 
of which the side facing the Drive bears an ex- 
quisite low relief, whose subject is " The Call to 
the Fire," while at the ends are groups of 
"Memory" and "Duty." With the passing of 
the fire horses, in growing favour of the motor 
vehicles for quick transportation of men and ap- 
paratus, we are losing a strong picturesque touch 
in city life, and the relief, which records the 
moving and stirring scene of magnificent horses 
straining every muscle in an effort at incredible 
speed while the firemen lean far over the shafts 
to give fullest rein to their powers, will soon 
have an historic as well as an artistic interest. 

The motor bus combines convenience with ad- 
venture. It opens a direct way to Grant's Tomb, 
to Claremont, and to the historic Jumel Mansion, 
on Washington Heights; it takes one within a 
stone's throw of Columbia University and easy 
access of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the 
Divine. 

One's sense of having left New York behind 
grows when, ascending the steep slope from the 



360 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Riverside Drive, one arrives at the summit of the 
Momingside Heights, overlooking the deep park, 
which dips down again to the lower level on the 
east side of the island. The topography of the 
country has here been in a measure preserved to 
the immense advantage of the new city that has 
grown up about the University and the Cathedral, 
and it is with less difficulty that we can reconstruct 
its primitive condition; for certain landmarks still 
stand to indicate the outstanding features of its 
colonial history. 

We are now upon famous ground associated 
with Revolutionary days, and though names have 
been changed it is easy to recognize in Cathedral, 
Columbia, and Morningside Heights the area com- 
prised, in those days, under the general title, Van 
de Water Heights, the territory occupied by the 
British during the Battle of Harlem Heights, 
fought on the high ground and in the valley over 
a widespread field between the two encampments. 
The American forces were scattered over the Har- 
lem Heights as far as Washington's headquarters 
in the Jumel Mansion, overlooking the Harlem 
River, above Harlem Plains. This was then the 
house of Roger Morris, a royalist, and had been 
seized by the Continental troops in the summer of 
1776 for Washington's military occupancy. Hav- 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 361 

ing the " most commanding view on the island," 
nothing better for the purpose could have been 
devised. 

We are to remember that Washington's army 
had been disastrously worsted on Long Island, and 
landing at Kip's Bay in a state of panic, was in 
frantic flight before the enemy, when, thanks to 
Mrs. Murray's strategic inspiration. General Howe 
and his officers were diverted from pursuit and 
kept wining and dining at Incleberg, on the 
bold word of a charming hostess that the Ameri- 
cans had long since escaped beyond possibility of 
capture. All this time, as we know, Washington 
and Putnam, almost within earshot of the tea- 
party, were exerting superhuman efforts to rally 
their disordered troops in Robert Murray's corn- 
fields, close by the house, somewhere between the 
present Grand Central Station and Bryant Park. 

The thing seems nearly incredible, but it was 
almost as Albert Herter pictures it in his tapestry 
in the Hotel McAlpin — Howe and his subordinates 
yielding to the blandishments of this remarkable 
woman while Washington's army files silently by 
in full view of the enemy. How marvellous she 
must have been — what courage, what nerve she 
displayed, knowing full weU the frightful risks! 

After the retreat of the American army from 



362 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Long Island, we are to remember, Washington 
retired to the Apthorpe Mansion, in a stretch of 
country overlooking the Harlem River. Its site 
is pointed out between Ninety-first and Ninety- 
second Streets, just west of Columbus Avenue. 
The situation was well fortified, but Washington 
knew well that it could not be held long against 
a British attack, and so he sent the main body of 
the army to Harlem Heights at the northern end 
of the island, and left only a force of four thou- 
sand men, under General Putnam, in New York. 
It was these men that Putnam was trying to lead 
to the main body of the army, under cover of Mrs. 
Murray's hospitality. Washington came to the 
rescue, and the two generals met where two roads 
crossed, close by the present intersection of Broad- 
way and Forty-third Street. 

When the British realized that the patriots had 
joined the main army and were safely encamped 
within a mile of the Roger Morris house, they 
spent the night along Apthorpe Lane and threw 
up fortifications just north, extending across the 
island from Hoorn's Hoek to Striker's Bay. 

The first line of works thrown up by the Ameri- 
cans was at about One Hundred and Forty- 
seventh Street, and the hill as far south as the 
" Hollow Way," the valley through which Manhat- 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 363 

tan Street now passes, was occupied by Washing- 
ton's army. " Generally these were the posi- 
tions of the two forces on September 16, 1776. 
On that morning Colonel Thomas Knowlton, who 
had seen service at Lexington, Bunker Hill, and 
Long Island, was directed by Washington to make 
a reconnaissance of the enemy's position. Mov- 
ing southward with his Connecticut Rangers along 
the westerly side near the Hudson, they were 
screened from view by the woods covering Hoog- 
landt's farm. It was not until they reached Nich- 
olas Jones' farmhouse, about sunrise, that the 
British pickets, light infantrymen, were encoun- 
tered. Evidently stationed on the Bloomingdale 
Road at about One Hundred and Fourth Street, 
their regiments were encamped a short distance 
to the south. During the brisk skirmish which 
now took place, the woods along the dividing line 
between the Jones and Hooglandt farms echoed 
the sharp firing from both sides. The forces were 
so disproportionate as to numbers, and the object 
of the movement had been so far attained that 
Knowlton ordered a retreat, which was effected 
without confusion. He had, however, ten killed 
in action. They fell back along the line of the 
road, closely pursued. The enemy halted at the 
elevation known as ' Claremont,' from which point 



364 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

they could catch glimpes of General Greene's 
troops on the opposite slopes. 

" This was the third time within a month that 
the British had scattered or driven Washington's 
men with ease, and it only remained on this occa- 
sion for their bugler to sound the contemptuous 
notes of the hunt across the Hollow into the Amer- 
ican lines. To quote one of the latter's officers: 
' The enemy appeared in open view and in the 
most insulting manner soimded their bugle horns 
as is usual after a fox chase; I never felt such a 
sensation before — it seemed to crown our dis- 
grace.' Washington had gone down to the ad- 
vanced position and heard the firing. He was 
urged to reinforce the Rangers, but was not im- 
mediately persuaded of the advisability of forcing 
the fighting. Eventually he determined on a stra- 
tegical plan, viz.: to make a feint in front of the 
hill and induce the enemy to advance into the 
Hollow, and second, should this prove successful, 
to send a strong detachment circuitously around 
their right flank to the rear and hem them in. This 
plan succeded in so far that the enemy, seeing the 
advance, promptly accepted battle, ' ran down the 
hill and took possession of some fences and 
bushes,' from which vantage a smart fire was be- 
gun, but at too great distance to do much execu- 




KIKEMEN S MONUMENT, RIVERSIDE DRIVE 
H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, ARCHITECT 
ATTILIO PICCIRILLI, SCULPTOR (PAGE 359) 



DUTY/ BY ATTILIO PICCIRILLI 
DETAIL OF firemen's MONUMENT 




COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 365 

tion. The flanking party, composed of Knowl- 
ton's Rangers, now back at the lines, w^s rein- 
forced by three companies of riflemen from the 
Third Virginia Regiment under Major Andrew 
Leitch. In some unlucky manner the attack was 
premature ' as it was rather in flank than in rear.' 
Both the brave leaders fell in this engagement, 
Knowlton living but an hour. . . . Nothing 
daunted by the loss of their commanders, the 
Rangers and riflemen pressed on. The British, 
who had been inveigled into the Hollow Way, had 
in the meantime been put to flight by use of ar- 
tillery and were pushed back towards their camp 
along the line of the road to a buckwheat field on 
top of a high hill. Heretofore the manoeuvring 
had taken place largely on the Hooglandt farm; 
the main action was then transferred to Van de 
Waters' Heights. 

" The general limits of this ' hot contest ' were 
the high ground extending from Columbia Uni- 
versity around westward and northerly to Grant's 
Tomb and Claremont. The fighting grew into a 
pitched battle, lasting from noon until about two 
o'clock; nearly 1,800 Americans were engaged, 
composed of commands representing New Eng- 
land, Maryland, and Virginia, with volunteers 
from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. 



366 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

" The enemy finally retreated, followed in close 
pursuit, and the day was won. The route crossed 
an orchard just north of One Hundred and Elev- 
enth Street and terminated in the vicinity of Jones' 
house, where Knowlton first found them in the 
early morning. It was considered prudent to 
withdraw, and late in the afternoon the troops 
returned to camp, rejoicing in a success they had 
not anticipated. It is estimated that about thirty 
men were killed and not over a hundred wounded 
or missing. A total British loss of 171 was re- 
ported. This action put new courage into the 
patriots and exerted a wide influence over subse- 
quent events." 

This account of the Battle of Harlem Heights 
follows that of Henry P. Johnston, professor of 
history in the College of New York, and is quoted 
from an article contributed by Hopper Striker 
Mott to the *' Historical Guide to the City of 
New York."* The Bloomingdale Dutch Re- 
formed Church at One Hundred and Sixth Street 
and Broadway occupies the site of Nicholas Jones' 
house, near which began and ended the Battle of 
Harlem Heights. 

This whole historic region, until lately wild and 
uncultivated, was given a new impetus when, at 

* Compiled by Frank Bergen Kelley. 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 367 

about the same time, it was decided to locate the 
Cathedral and Columbia University upon the high 
ground overlooking both the Hudson and the 
Sound. That part of the old Van de Water 
Heights to which the Episcopal Cathedral now 
lends its name was acquired by the church in 1887, 
and the vast edifice was begun in 1892, and now, 
after a quarter of a century of slow progress, the 
crypt, the ambulatory, and the choir are prac- 
tically completed, and huge in themselves, give 
some hint of the intended dimensions of this great 
Protestant enterprise. 

Heins and La Farge, the latter a son of the 
painter, John La Farge, won the competition for 
the plan of the Cathedral over twenty-five archi- 
tects, in 1891. Perhaps the greatest success in 
American church building of the generation in 
which this competition was held was the Trinity 
Church of Boston, which had been built by Henry 
H. Richardson some fifteen years previous. A 
freely treated Romanesque influence preponder- 
ates in all his style, and as many of our younger 
architects were trained in his ateher, his influence 
was widely felt. Hardly one of the competitive 
designs for the Cathedral of New York failed to 
show the influence of his works, and this was 
natural, for Trinity, in its day, was considered the 



368 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

great masterpiece of its generation, and its favour- 
able impression was deepened by the same archi- 
tect's designs for the Cathedral of Albany. Heins 
and La Farge fell easily into the style which Rich- 
ardson had introduced, and the Cathedral is com- 
monly called Romanesque, and Romanesque it 
started out to be ; but upon the death of the senior 
partner, Mr. Heins, the contracts for the building 
were ended, and upon the completion of the choir, 
by Mr. La Farge, his firm retired from the work, 
and Ralph Adams Cram was appointed supervis- 
ing architect. This change of architects accounts 
in part for the mixture of Byzantine and Gothic 
details, such as the windows, the pulpit, and high 
altar, in the Romanesque style of the building; 
and, as the work advances, other more important 
departures from the original scheme are to be 
expected. In cathedrals of the old world, whose 
construction occupied several centuries, such com- 
binations of styles were inevitable and logical; the 
Romanesque melted into the Gothic, the Gothic 
into the Renaissance, as a church grew from one 
century to another, and each part represented the 
age in which it was conceived. But in the case of 
the Cathedral, where every detail is repeated from 
classic models, or based upon established orders, 
and nothing is characteristic of its own day and 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 369 

place, this anachronistic mixture seems unneces- 
sary, though criticism of the incomplete edifice 
is premature. 

If in the process of building the Protestant 
Cathedral the style was changed from Romanesque 
to Gothic, the latter appears only in the upper 
structure. The crypt is Romanesque, gaining a 
certain romanticism from the currently accepted 
story that it was hewn out of solid rock. Its chief 
treasure, the famous Tiffany Chapel, shown at the 
Columbian Exposition of 1893, was originally 
purchased by Mrs. Celia H. Wallace, of Chicago, 
who gave it to the Cathedral at a time when the 
crypt was the only portion of the edifice where 
services could be held. It has lately been removed 
to Mr. Louis Tiffany's estate at Oyster Bay, 
where, restored to its pristine loveliness, it is set in 
a private chapel built for it. 

The Tiffany Chapel constitutes an enduring 
and elaborate monument to its maker, Louis C. 
Tiffany, and the native New York product of 
his unique glass industry, developed through years 
of research and experiment. The altar is of white 
marble, enriched with mosaic, the emblems of the 
four evangelists being composed of pearl and 
semi-precious stones. The reredos, in iridescent 
glass mosaic, presents a design of the vine and 



370 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the peacock, a bird found in late Roman churches, 
notwithstanding its bad repute as the emblem of 
vanity, and the companion of Juno. A series of 
arches with ornament in relief, overlaid with 
gold and set with jewel-like glass, represent 
the ciborium; these arches are supported by 
mosaic-incrusted columns. Pendent lamps add 
to the brilliancy of the altar, which glowed in 
the mystic light of the crypt like something 
supernatural, and the effect was gorgeous and 
impressive. 

The choir was completed by Grant La Farge 
after his partner's death, and is the part now used 
for services, representing less than half the ulti- 
mate structure in length and breadth. Its striking 
feature is the eight Maine granite pillars set in 
a semicircle about the altar, each pillar a memo- 
rial. The altar is of Vermont marble, the reredos, 
surmounted by a cross, is of Pierre de Lens rest- 
ing on a base of Numidian marble. In the centre 
a figure of Christ is by Leo Lentelli, who also 
made the sixteen angels in the reredos, while Otto 
Jahnsen is the sculptor of the other figures, repre- 
senting the apostles, prophets, etc. Near the front 
of the altar, imbedded in the marble floor, is a 
square red tile, fourteen inches square, brought 
from the ancient Church of St. John the Divine 




^^^- 



ENTRANCE GATE TU THE BELMONT CHAPEL, CATHEDRAL OK ST. JOHN THE DIVINE 
HEINS AND LA FARGE, ARCHITECTS (.PAGE 374) 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 371 

at Ephesus, built by Justinian in 540 A.D., over 
the site of St. John's grave. 

The dome of the Cathedral was self-supporting 
at all times during the advance of the roofing 
and bore the weight of the workmen, still consid- 
ered an architectural feat, for, since the building 
of the cupola of the Duomo in Florence, the con- 
struction of a dome has presented a pretty prob- 
lem to architects. 

Vasari's racy account of Brunellesco's final 
triumph over the doubts and misgivings of the 
syndics and superintendents of Santa Maria del 
Fiore, who hesitated to entrust so grave a 
matter to one who pretended that a dome could 
be built without scaffolding, without a column 
in the centre, without a mound of earth inside 
to support the workmen, contains a rare de- 
scription of the difficulties which the building of 
the first dome since the days of the ancients pre- 
sented.* He pictures the conclave of wiseacres 
assembled to discuss the ways and means of erect- 
ing the cupola upon Arnolfo's cathedral. Bru- 
nellesco, having aspired to the joy of completing 
this edifice for many years, and having worked out 
the correct method according to the builders of 
ancient Rome, whose fragmentary record he had 

* Vasari' " Lives." Vol. I. 



372 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

exhaustively studied, had prepared in secret a 
perfect model of the dome, but feared to show 
it, knowing the jealousy and dishonesty of his 
rivals. 

To the solemn conclave therefore had been 
invited the most distinguished and experienced 
masters of architecture in France, Germany, 
Spain, and England, together with those of Tus- 
cany; all the best Florentine artists; and a select 
number of the most capable and ingenious citi- 
zens. And " a fine thing it was," says Vasari, " to 
hear the strange and various notions then pro- 
pounded." Brunellesco's claims were set aside as 
those of a madman, while the assemblage discussed 
the possibilities which occurred to them — the cen- 
tral pole to support the weight, the elaborate fab- 
ric of scaffolding, within and without, etc. — while 
the most ingenious method suggested, whose art- 
lessness gives the crowning touch of piquancy to 
the anecdote, was that the entire space under the 
proposed dome should be filled with earth upon 
which the workmen could stand in safety during 
the operation of building. It was further devel- 
oped that the enormous expense of getting rid of 
the earth could be dispensed with by the simple 
device of mingling in it small coins (quatrini), 
so that when the cupola was finished and the 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 373 

mound no longer needed, the poor Florentines 
could be depended upon to carry it away promptly 
and gladly for the sake of the prizes contained 
therein. 

But Brunellesco had rediscovered the secrets of 
the ancients, and his knowledge still serves the 
architecture of the present day ; and yet the build- 
ing of a great dome, such as covers the choir of 
the Cathedral, is a marvellous achievement. The 
ceiling is to be covered with gold mosaic, which 
will, in a measure, ameliorate the startling bril- 
liancy of the series of nine windows that are to fill 
the ambulatory. Three are now placed. The sub- 
jects are drawn from the Book of Revelation, 
and the entire contract is in the hands of Ernest 
R. Powell, of London. The Barberini tapestries, 
which adorn in a wholly irrelevant manner the 
present interior, in an attempt to soften its unfin- 
ished bleakness, are interesting in themselves and 
are from the Palazzo Barberini at Rome, having 
been produced by the manufactory formed by the 
cardinal of that illustrious family, early in the 
seventeenth century. 

Opening upon the ambulatory close, about the 
sanctuary, are the seven Chapels of the Tongues, 
in which, following the ardent wish of Bishop 
Potter, services are conducted in different Ian- 



374 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

guages. These are all memorials, designed by- 
different architects. The first was given by Mrs. 
Potter, in memory of her husband, Henry Codman 
Potter; while his children erected the handsome 
memorial to their father, the chief ornament of 
the church, as it now stands. This consists of a 
recumbent figure of the bishop, reposing upon a 
sarcophagus of Siena marble, made by James 
Earle Eraser, sculptor, and Henry Bacon, archi- 
tect. The chiselling of the figure, in white marble, 
is very beautiful, and the monument a dignified 
and impressive work. 

Of the chapels, besides this one, dedicated to St. 
James, Henry Vaughan was the architect of St. 
Boniface and St. Ansgarius, the latter a memo- 
rial to the late William R. Huntington, of Grace 
Church; Carrere and Hastings designed the 
Renaissance chapel of St. Ambrose; Cram and 
Ferguson the French Gothic chapel of St. Martin 
of Tours; and Heins and La Farge made the 
St. Columba and St. Savior, the latter given by 
August Belmont in memory of his wife, Bessie 
Morgan Belmont. The entrance gate to the 
Belmont chapel is a magnificent piece of work, 
and the large window is distinguished and suitable. 

The architectural scheme includes an extensive 
series of external sculptures by Gutzon Borglum. 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 375 

Across the street from the Cathedral, in the 
chapel of St. Luke's Hospital, is a large and 
interesting window by Henry Holiday, the dis- 
ciple of Burne-Jones, erected to the memory of 
Adam Norrie and William Augustus Muhlenberg, 
the founder of the hospital, by Gordon Norrie. 
Though there are many windows by Henry Holi- 
day in New York, none so handsomely presents 
the English glass, in its best period, as this 
" Christ the Consoler and the Seven Acts of 
Mercy." The groups of sufferers are types rather 
than symbols, but attention may be called to the 
archangels Gabriel and Michael, who stand as 
supporters on each side of the throne; the former, 
who announced the birth of the Saviour, appears 
as the bringer of good, with the accompanying 
words, " Immanuel, God with Us"; and the 
latter, who overcame the devil, as the banisher 
of evil, with the words, " Deliver Us from 
Evil." 

A few years ago Morningside Park received an 
important memorial statue to Carl Schurz, our 
Prussian statesman, journalist, and general, who 
came to this country at the age of twenty-three 
years and rendered distinguished service to the 
Union Army in the Civil War, serving at the 
battles of Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, 



376 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

and Chattanooga. This portrait statue, with ex- 
edra and two rehefs, has been considered the most 
perfect achievement of Karl Bitter, and perhaps, 
as the complete work of his hand, best represents 
that sculptor in the city. The monumental char- 
acter of the figure, achieved without loss of per- 
sonal interest, is sufficiently compelling to arrest 
the eye of one who looks among the chaff of our 
innumerable portrait statues for the occasional 
grain of wheat; but the real importance of the 
monument, in which lies its peculiar claim to atten- 
tion, is contained in those astonishing reliefs so 
eloquently cut into the hard, black granite at the 
ends of the exedra. There is nothing like them 
in American art, and they repeat with the vigour 
and assurance of original conception the suggestion 
of those primitive Egyptian and Assyrian silhou- 
etted animal forms, the types of such art. Their 
subjects relate abstractly to the great human in- 
terests of Schurz' life — the freedom of slaves and 
the enlightenment of a people — but our absorbed 
attention is not for subject, but for the charm of 
those flowing contours, the strength and vivacity 
of accent, the beauty and purity of line, suggested 
in its delineation. 

Carl Schurz faces the termination of the street 
that leads back to Columbia University, and turns 




RECUMBENT FIGURE, BISHOP HENRY CODMAN POTTER 
CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE 
JAMES EARLE ERASER, SCULPTOR (PAGE 3/4) 




RELIEF, CARL SCHURZ MONUMENT, MORNINGSIDE PARK 
KARL BITTER, SCULPTOR (PAGE 3/6) 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 377 

his back upon the intimate beauties of Morning- 
side Park, that climbs the precipice upon whose 
summit the statue rests. There is a commanding 
view here of the vast city from which the Morn- 
ingside Heights detaches itself, encompassing 
within itself that miniature city included in the 
great composition of the Columbia University, to 
which, following the direction indicated by the 
monument, we are now to turn. 

Columbia, with her vast resources, seems to have 
found a permanent resting-place in a situation 
that combines at once the advantages of the coun- 
try with a ready accessibility to the heart of the 
city. Yet the move was considered radical enough 
when first contemplated, in 1891. 

Columbia had already made one northward 
move before the drive of the city's growth; its 
first site was upon a grant of land bestowed by 
the Trinity Church corporation, lying between 
Murray and Barclay Streets, and extending from 
Church Street to the river. During the time that 
de Lancey governed the province the founding 
of a college was considered, and money for the 
purpose raised by lotteries, while preliminary 
classes were held in the vestry of Trinity Church. 
Finally, in 1754, a royal charter was granted by 
George II to " King's College," and two years 



378 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

later the corner-stone of the first college building 
was laid. A tablet near Broadway and Murray 
Street marks the first home of our great Uni- 
versity. 

It was a small group of New Yorkers who 
founded King's College, at a time when Manhat- 
tan Island had fewer inhabitants by some hundreds 
than Columbia has now students, and but thirteen 
of the founders held academic degrees. Never- 
theless they drew a charter whose liberality in 
times of bitter religious controversy and narrow 
intellectual outlook showed remarkable breadth 
and an extraordinary confidence in the future. 
The first class, numbering seven students, grad- 
uated in 1758; Hamilton, Livingston, and Jay 
were early graduates, and De Witt Clinton was 
the first student to enter college after peace, fol- 
lowing the Revolution, was declared. The year 
of the founding coincided with that in which the 
Colonial Congress met at Albany to discuss the 
Colonial Union, and the little college caught the 
spirit of the day and played its brave part in the 
founding of the republic. The schools were closed 
during the war, and upon reopening, in 1781, the 
name " Columbia," coined by the patriots and 
popularized in a Revolutionary song, was adopted, 
in place of " Bang's," in vindication of our glorious 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 379 

independence. The old iron crown that once 
formed the finial of King's College is treasured 
in the library of the new University. 

Columbia outgrew its first habitat after a cen- 
tury of occupancy, and spent the next forty years 
in a semi-temporary location at Forty-ninth Street 
and Madison Avenue. The new site, on Morning- 
side Heights, encumbered at the time of its pur- 
chase by the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, 
did not come into the possession of the University 
until October, 1894, three years after its acquisi- 
tion by the trustees. The interim was employed 
in raising the necessary funds for the change, and 
in considering the architectural schemes presented 
by various architects for the new building, with 
the result that the Renaissance plan recommended 
by Charles F. McKim and his partners was 
selected, and INIr. McKim's devoted share towards 
making the University what it is to-day is recorded 
in the inscription placed in his honour in the South 
Court : De super artificis spectant monumenta per 
annos. 

We have spoken a great deal of the contribution 
of Stanford White towards the making of New 
York, and the time has now come to dwell per- 
haps a little more in particular upon the work 
of the distinguished senior partner of the firm, 



380 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Charles Follen McKim, of whom the University 
Library was the first great monumental work, and 
McKim's own child. McKim, like White, had 
been reared in the atelier of H. H. Richardson; 
if White was Richardson's first assistant in the 
building of Trinity Church, Boston, McKim 
worked on the winning design, and there is no 
doubt that to this earlier architect, who with Hunt 
had been the dominant man in the profession in 
America, the young firm owed much of its thor- 
oughness and skill. 

Richardson was the first architect of note in 
America, in the past generation, to lay supreme 
stress upon the importance of the material in con- 
struction. McKim, trained in his office, learned 
this side of the profession, and his firm carried on 
and developed the traditions, sparing themselves 
neither time nor expense to insure solid work per- 
fectly carried out. This firm, as we know it, was 
formed in 1879, and as one writer has said, the 
conditions which faced Sir Christopher Wren, 
when, after the great fire of London, he was called 
upon to plan the rebuilding of that city, were in 
many ways similar to those which confronted the 
young firm of McKim, Mead, and White when 
they began the transformation of New York from 
a very ugly and commonplace town to the brilliant 




SETH LOW MEMORIAL LIBRARY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
CHARLES FOLLEX MCKIM, ARCHITECT (PAGE 383) 



ALMA MATER/ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH, SCULPTOR (PAGE 384) 




Copyright by Daniel Chester French 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 381 

city of to-day. McKim departed from the Roman- 
esque style which Richardson had introduced, and 
which he alone handled with any distinguished 
success. 

The early work of the young architects natu- 
rally was domestic. They built many private 
houses, of which one of the most beautiful is the 
Kane house at Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth 
Street. Of their clubs, the Century is the oldest, 
and was almost wholly the design of White, and 
a striking example of his skill, presenting to Forty- 
third Street a simple balanced fa9ade of stone, 
brick, and terra cotta. This was one of the first 
buildings in the United States in which the long, 
thin " Roman " brick was used and may be said 
to have created the fashion. The Harvard Club 
is a beautiful example of Georgian architecture, 
while the University and Metropolitan Clubs, 
credited respectively to McKim and AVhite, are 
in effect monuments to their mastery of design. 
It is interesting to note that the chef d'oeuvre of 
the firm, the Boston Public Library, stands oppo- 
site Richardson's masterpiece. Trinity Church, in 
Copley Square, and these two monuments make 
the distinction of that locality. 

McKim's individual skill in design is wonder- 
fully exemplified in that pure architectural gem, 



382 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the Morgan Library; his intensely practical re- 
sources, in the Pennsylvania Terminal. In the one 
we see the essence of restraint and discrimination, 
the elegance of a casket destined to hold the treas- 
ures of a multimillionaire bibhophile; in the other 
the monumental gateway of a great city. In the 
Pennsylvania Terminal the suggestion of style 
came from the great Roman baths, and the marvel 
is that so huge a scheme, so monumental in char- 
acter, should combine so many impressive and 
practical features. When we know that McKim 
was excluded from the final competition for the 
New York Public Library because he refused to 
sacrifice architectural beauty to convenience, the 
Terminal becomes the more important as showing 
how in the lapse of years the architect developed 
the power to combine the two. The only real in- 
convenience of the station is, perhaps, that one 
may well miss the train long after having arrived 
at the main portal, so much ground has to be 
covered on foot after entering the building, but 
given a moderate allowance of leisure nothing 
could be more admirable that the silent way in 
which, entering what the French so picturesquely 
call the Salle des Pas Perdus, particularly appli- 
cable to this vast apartment where footsteps are 
eaten up by the lofty space and all sound becomes 



COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 383 

negligible, all the necessary features of departure 
and arrival are spread before one in logical 
sequence. Again the concourse with its accessible 
exits, its facilities for disbursing crowds without 
confusion or disorder, its quiet apertures for 
descending to the trains arriving and departing 
through the tunnel, is a very great feat of plan- 
ning, indeed almost flawless, so far as is humanly 
possible. The very decorations of the building, 
confined to great decorative maps of the country, 
handled by that master of flat surfaces, Jules 
Guerin, contribute the crowning note of utility 
made beautiful, a thing so rare in New York as 
to merit profound study. This was McKim's last 
work; he died, in 1909, while the Terminal was 
under construction. 

The Columbia Library, then, was McKim's first 
monumental work, conceived as the axis of the 
whole symmetrical system of buildings which react 
to its integral beauty. It remains, within and 
without, a most complete and consistent modern 
edifice. The library was the gift of the president 
of the University, Seth Low, and constitutes a 
memorial to his father, Abiel Abbott Low, a 
citizen of Brooklyn and merchant of New 
York. The Chamber of Commerce preserves his 
portrait. 



384 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Built of grey limestone, its commanding dome 
and noble portico carrying the note of resemblance, 
its architecture, true to the tenets of its designer, 
follows the most perfect of prototypes. The Villa 
Rotonda, of Vicenzo, was the model, and how 
closely it follows Palladio's masterpiece may 
readily be determined by a comparison of the 
library with the handsome painting of the classic 
edifice in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn 
Museum. 

The approach to the library, through the South 
Court, which is, of course, the entrance to the 
whole compact scheme of the University buildings, 
is made the more impressive and memorable by 
the presence, on the steps, of French's " Alma 
Mater," a figure at once commanding and winning. 
Mr. French devoted a large part of the years 
1902 and 1903 to this statue, for which the model 
was Miss Mary Lawton, the American actress, 
whose personality may be traced, with almost the 
fidelity of portraiture, in many of the sculptor's 
statuesque figures. The setting is superb, both 
for the sculpture and the library. The large court, 
in the Italian style, with its paved esplanade, its 
granite wall and balustrade on three sides, and the 
great stone vases, flowers, shrubs, and exuberant 
fountains, gives poise and dignity, while from it 




FOUXTAl.X ul ;il.. ... 
GEORGE GRAY HAKXAkl 



.PTUK (,FAGK 3bOj 



DETAIL OF BARNARD S 
FOUNTAIN OF PAN 




COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 385 

wide steps lead to the library grade, ten feet above 
the street. 

A striking note of unity is achieved through the 
fact that the other buildings of the group have all 
the same base line as the library, which is 150 feet 
above the Hudson, and the same cornice line, sixty- 
nine feet higher. All the buildings open upon the 
campus, which gives to the effect a security simi- 
lar to that of a walled city. As the buildings 
included in the plan are filled in the purpose of 
the original conception gains coherence. The large 
scale provides for spacious interiors, and the whole 
mass of the composition makes a strong centre in 
the arrangement of the Heights, not merely effec- 
tive in itself, but important as a basis for the 
architectural development of the entire surround- 
ing district. 

The colour decoration of the library represents 
the taste of the same artist whose murals furnish 
the important interior feature of the Custom 
House, Elmer E. Garnsey, who has made of this 
one of the most perfect examples of its kind. The 
interior of St. Paul's chapel, recalling the early 
Renaissance churches of Northern Italy, consid- 
ering its Italian chancel furniture, its fine organ, 
and minor details of equipment, together with its 
architectural beauty, becomes one of the most 



386 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

precious artistic possessions of the University. 
The three interesting windows are by John La 
Farge. 

Practically all of the art treasures of the campus 
and interiors have come to the institution by gift. 
Le Marteleur, one of Constant Meunier's forceful 
presentations of workmen, came to the University 
from the class of 1889, and was purchased from 
the exhibition of the Belgian sculptor's works held 
in one of the halls, in 1914. George Gray Bar- 
nard's spirited fountain of Pan, piping to the birds 
which bathe in the basin below him, was presented 
in 1907 by Edward Severin Clark. This recum- 
bent statue, with its mysterious expression, its 
oddly perverse legs, with inverted joints, has much 
charm of surface modelling, while its polished 
black bronze makes an effective note in a seques- 
tered corner of the campus. 



XIX 

INWOOD 

Manhattanville to Kingsbridge 

When Gouverneur Morris, Simeon de Witt, 
and John Rutherford, a century ago, with square 
and ruler marked the monotonous future of the 
island city, they laid upon her a curse against 
which succeeding generations seem to have been 
powerless. " Straight-sided and right-angled 
houses were " the most cheap to live in," they 
decreed, and so the " dry-goods-box-set-up-on- 
end" style of architecture, which Hopkinson 
Smith so picturesquely anathematized, has fol- 
lowed up the course of subway development, 
presenting its bewindowed faces, " like so many 
underdone waffles," from Battery Park to Harlem 
Creek and on beyond throughout the parallele- 
pipeds of the Bronx. 

While mighty engineers burrowed and blasted 
their terriffic trail through the gneiss and trap-rock 
of the substratum, pick and shovel made sum- 
mary disposal of the features overhead; hill was 

387 



388 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

dumped into dale as the shortest cut to the desired 
dead level of civilization, and the ponderous steam- 
roller, following in their train, crushed and flat- 
tened any obdurate remnants of variability in a 
landscape of whose handsome topography we have 
even yet dramatic evidence. 

At this, the eleventh hour, there has arisen a 
sort of desperate movement to " save the pieces." 
Inherent beauty, driven before the hand of prog- 
ress, even as the American forces were pushed 
by British invasion in Revolutionary times, has 
found its last etape where Washington defended 
his last stronghold, on the ultimate heights at the 
extreme northern end of the island. 

The busy and impatient are hurled the length 
of Manhattan and on to the Bronx through the 
serpentine tunnel, coming up twice for air only 
to observe the wreck of the country-side, the 
levelling of high places, the filling in of hollows. 
Factories, electric light plants, monster gas tanks 
blot out views that once inspired poets, painters, 
and novelists. Automobilists speeding along the 
driveway bordering the Hudson have a scarcely 
richer impression of the touching reserves of this 
last stand which beauty makes in the upper, inac- 
cessible reaches of the island. 

Where the land narrows, with the bend of the 



INWOOD 389 

Harlem River, above Manhattanville, the succes- 
sion of promonotories, each capped with its fine 
old country-seat, bespeaks a remoter time when, 
behind their own teams of blooded horses, the gen- 
tlemen of Inwood, Kingsbridge, and Washington 
Heights drove to business over the ten or twelve 
miles of indifferent roadway that lay between their 
estates and the heart of the little city. Several 
of the historic mansions which figured in Revo- 
lutionary history have recently been rescued and 
preserved to future generations; others on the 
blissful highroad to rack and ruin stand on lonely 
forgotten crags, overlooking the dismal streets 
below, graded in the accepted fashion and dark 
as sunless ravines. 

Nor are remnants of vulgar village life wanting 
in this region. The Harlem goats, once the sport 
of comic weeklies, have been crowded out; but I 
have seen at least two cavorting on the slopes of 
the Bolton Road at Inwood — their coarse hair 
heavily matted with burs, feeding on the tradi- 
tional tomato tin, garnished with old newspaper, 
as happy and care-free as though they were not 
the last of their once prolific race. 

Only the pedestrian can get the full flavour of 
this rough, inaccessible wooded country bordering 
the convolutions of the old Spuyten Duyvil Creek, 



390 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

a region replete with suggestion, readily recon- 
structed by the fertile imagination, for little has 
happened to disturb its pristine state since the first 
white man, presumably Henry Hudson, stepped 
ashore to barter with the native Indians under 
the famous Tulip Tree, still standing and still 
blossoming, at the base of that w^ooded knoll. 

The Indian name of the stream connecting the 
East and North Rivers was Muscoota, but from 
earliest times the part of the Harlem River nearest 
the Hudson was called Spuyten Duyvil Creek. 
Some say the name referred to a spring of water 
which " spouted " from the hill near the end of 
the island, and of which mention is made in sev- 
eral of the early English grants. Before the con- 
struction of the ship canal, which simplified the 
tangle of tributaries by a deep short-cut through 
the mesh, the tides used to race through the creek 
with great rapidity. Receding they left a marshy 
bed criss-crossed with rivulets; but when they met, 
rushing simultaneously up the Hudson and Har- 
lem Rivers, the tide rips thus formed caused great 
turbulence in the creek and the water was dashed 
into the air to incredible heights, with an effect 
similar to that noticed at Hell Gate before the 
blasting out of the big rocks in the channel. Racy 
titles seem to have been the fashion for these nat- 



INWOOD 391 

ural disturbances, and this may have been the 
" spouting " or " spiking devil," if that be the 
true significance of the name. 

At low tide there was a natural ford through 
the creek used by the Indians and early settlers, 
referred to in old deeds and records as " the wad- 
ing place." Before the first King's Bridge was 
built this was freely used; the only other means 
of communication between the island and the main- 
land was by ferry. Frederick Philipse, the Dutch 
millionaire, one of the backers of Captain Kidd, 
built the first bridge, in 1693, and outraged the 
farmers of Westchester County by charging them 
toll for the crossing, until these, grown tired of 
paying their money into the coffers of the manor 
lord of Yonkers, built the Free Bridge across the 
foot of Two Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, 
in 1758; and a boycott of King's Bridge soon 
forced a remission of the toll. 

These bridges facilitated Washington's retreat 
to White Plains, whither he withdrew the main 
body of the army after the success of the Battle 
of Harlem Heights, leaving Fort Washington 
garrisoned by a force of a few thousand men, in 
command of General Magaw. It was well that he 
had not to repeat the perilous experience incident 
to his evacuation of Brooklyn after the Battle of 



392 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Long Island. This had been done by pressing 
into service every available craft that had either 
oars or sails, and was an undertaking fraught with 
romantic and thrilling incident. 

Once safely landed on Manhattan Washington's 
idea was at once to continue the retreat and to 
place his forces intact beyond immediate danger, 
for Howe, with his fleet and drilled soldiers, had 
still the situation in his hands, had he taken the 
prompt measures that were daily and hourly 
anticipated by the patriots. But congress would 
not consent to the surrender of New York, and 
while the British commander dallied with his 
opportunities on Long Island, Washington was 
forced to an ordeal of nerve-racking inaction and 
suspense. He established his own headquarters 
in the beautiful colonial house, built by Roger 
Morris for his bride, Mary Philipse, a daughter 
of the lord of the manor, who built the King's 
Bridge. 

This house was then in the first decade of its 
adventurous history, for 1765 has been fixed upon 
as the probable date of its construction. The plan 
of the house is Georgian, but of a peculiar English 
type seldom seen in this country. Its distinguish- 
ing architectural feature is the deep octagonal 
drawing room projecting from the rear of the 




"THE OLD TULIP TREE: INWOOD 

AFTER A PAINTING BY ERNEST LAWSON (PAGE SQO) 



INWOOD 393 

broad entrance hall, entered from a pillared porch, 
baronial in character. Its was a period of honest 
construction, and though the severe plainness of 
the interior has been thought to suggest haste 
in its erection, time was taken to line the outer 
walls with English brick, and the house was built 
to last. 

Roger Morris was a colonel in the British Army 
garrisoned in New York, and his town house stood 
at Whitehall and Stone Streets, its site now cov- 
ered by the east wall of the Custom House. This 
then was his luxurious country-seat, built upon 
land given to Mary Philipse by her wealthy father, 
as part of her munificent wedding dowry. Roger 
Morris and Mary Philipse had been married, in 
1758, in the old Philipse manor house, at Yonkers, 
and the marriage settlement was a curious old- 
fashioned deed, entailing her estates upon her 
unborn children. But this heritage was diverted 
by the events of the Revolutionary War; Roger 
Morris and his wife and all of her family were 
" loyalists," as the favorable term goes, " royal- 
ists," the patriots called them, and Roger Morris 
fled at the approach of the American soldiers, 
while his wife occupied the house until late in the 
month of August of this eventful year, when, 
finding it likely to become a theatre of war, she 



394 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

left hastily and found a refuge with the Tories. 
At the close of the Revolution her estates were 
confiscated and she went with her husband back 
to England. 

Roger Morris was an Englishman born. He 
came to this country as aide-de-camp to General 
Braddock, under whom Washington also served 
in a similar capacity in the French War. Much 
has been made of the romantic story of the court- 
ship of Mary Philipse by these two soldiers, and 
of Washington's unsuccessful suit when he had 
to offer only the modest prospects of an humble 
surveyor; and if this be true it is possible that 
he felt a certain grim satisfaction in ousting the 
happy pair, and taking military possession of their 
nest, so favourably situated for its new purpose. 
Their drawing room became his Council Chamber. 
He slept in the room directly over it and the small 
antechambers, one each side, were occupied by his 
aides, of whom one was Alexander Hamilton. 

The house, with its " one hundred and thirty 
acres of arable pasture land, and five acres of best 
salt meadow," was described in those days as " sit- 
uate on the narrowest part of York Island," and 
commanding the most extensive view on Manhat- 
tan, overlooking the city, ten miles distant, the 
high hills on Staten Island, more than twenty 



INWOOD 395 

miles away; to the left, Long Island, the Harlem 
River, Hell Gate, and the Sound ; and to the right 
the noble Hudson, with its palisades and pictur- 
esque shipping. The Jmnel family, who after- 
wards occupied it, boasted that seven counties 
could be seen " from the gallery under the 
portico." 

Washington's niilitary occupation of the house 
lasted only from September 16 to October 21, but 
it continued to figure in the history of the war, 
and during the British occupation of the island 
it was the headquarters off and on for a long 
period of Lieutenant-General Knyphausen, the 
commander of the Hessian troops. Its subsequent 
history up to the time when, in 1901, the mansion 
and what was left of the large estate were pur- 
chased by the city, does not belong to our present 
story. Indeed, it has been so admirably immor- 
talized in a recent edition de luxe, written and 
published by its present custodian, Mr. William 
Henry Sheldon, that the curious reader who would 
follow the vagaries of Stephen Jumel and his spec- 
tacular wife, Ehza, or Betsy Bowen, cannot do 
better than read this remarkable book.* Suffice 
for us to know, in passing, that Betsy Bowen, of 
doubtful parentage and adventurous history, hav- 

*"The Jumel Mansion," by William Henry Sheldon. 1917. 



396 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

ing, in 1804, tricked Stephen Jumel into becoming 
her legal husband, urged him to buy for her the old 
Morris house, which John Jacob Astor was offer- 
ing for sale, in 1810. It was lavishly refitted by 
Stephen Jumel, who was a man of taste, and con- 
sidered " the most luxurious country-seat in all 
New York." 

Madame Jumel spared no expense in her efforts 
to be recognized by New York society, and failing 
to get her footing here, sailed to Europe in her 
husband's own ship, the Eliza, named for herself, 
and commenced that life in Paris of which accounts 
are so confusing and so little reliable. She re- 
mained Jumel's wife for twenty-two years, until 
his death in 1882, when Aaron Burr fell a victim 
to her charms, or her money, and became for a 
brief space her aged and troublesome husband. 
The ceremony that made her Madame Burr, a 
title which she found useful during her last trip 
to Paris, in 1853, took place in the small parlour 
to the left of the entrance. Her life spanned 
almost a century; born a year before the Declara- 
tion of Independence, she died in 1865, in Wash- 
ington's bedchamber, looking very much as she 
does in the full-length portrait which hangs in 
the hall of the mansion, demented, and " powdered 
and rouged to the end." Stephen Jumel had 



INWOOD 397 

been modestly interred in the consecrated ground 
of the old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Prince Street, 
and just in front of an iron gate, opening from 
the stone flagging of the Mott Street entrance, is 
the horizontal marble slab, which once bore the 
inscription to his memory, and of which now the 
single word, " Stephen," is barely decipherable and 
rapidly going. The slab rests on marble posts, in 
the graceful style of its epoch, raised three feet 
above the damp old ground of this forgotten 
cemetery attached to the Cathedral, where had 
been solemnized the hasty marriage of Betsy 
Bowen and Stephen Jumel. Madame Jumel, on 
the other hand, lies in a stately tomb, overlooking 
the Hudson, in Trinity Cemetery. 

The Jumel ownership fixed the popular name 
to the house, which no amount of restoration and 
activity on the part of the colonial societies in- 
terested can dislodge; and in this there is a certain 
justice, for had not Stephen Jumel and his eccen- 
tric wife rescued the property, already famous 
through its Revolutionary history, it would doubt- 
less have continued the road-house that it became 
after it was taken by the government. Washing- 
ton, in his journal under the date of July 10, 
1790, refers to his second visit to " the house, 
lately Colonel Roger Morris' but confiscated and 



398 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

now in possession of a common farmer." So 
that its deterioration began at once in true New 
York fashion, and posterity can only be grateful 
to its vain and ambitious chatelaine, who preserved 
its beauty during the best part of a destructive 
century. The stories invented by this extraordi- 
nary lady, and recounted by her after she had lost 
her reason, have invested the mansion with an 
aroma of romance and mystery, very fascinating 
to dwell upon. They stimulate the imagination 
and lend color to the facts, themselves sufficiently 
strange, so, though crushed to earth, may they 
rise again in all their charming mendacity! 

There is nothing legendary, however, in the 
quite as thrilling story of Washington's occupa- 
tion of the Roger Morris house, and his camp 
of eight thousand untrained soldiers successfully 
manipulated through the amazing Battle of Har- 
lem Heights. The general importance of the 
" affair " at Harlem Heights is picturesquely 
coloured by its local interest. Coming as it did 
immediately after the calamity on Long Island, 
it served as a prelude to the brilliant exploits of 
the American army at Trenton and Princeton; 
and being the only contest within the limits of 
Greater New York that resulted in victory for 
the Americans, it has peculiar charm for its citi- 



INWOOD 399 

zens. We know by all sorts of practical means, 
such as the mass of Hessian buttons and military 
rehcs dug up throughout the whole territory lying 
north of Van de Water Heights, during recent 
excavations, that the fighting was widespread; 
and gazing at the very ground on which this battle 
was fought, and tracing the outlines of the earth- 
works at Washington Heights, where our soldiers 
were finally defeated, in a second engagement 
with General Howe's superior forces, augmented 
by the hated Hessians, examining the military hut 
reconstructed from old materials, the pile of shot 
found at Fort Independence on the Kingsbridge 
Heights, one can put one's self in live touch with 
this critical and tempestous moment of Revolu- 
tionary history. 

Imagination is the better served since nothing 
formal has been done, beyond the almost too clean 
restoration of the Dyckman house, with its flut- 
tering flag, to induce the reverential spirit. If 
the recent Rockefeller purchase of Fort Tryon, 
with the fifty-seven acre tract, comprising the 
Billings, Hays, and Sheafer estates, and consti- 
tuting the northern outwork of the defence, is 
really to become park land, the place will lose its 
fascinating casual quality, which now makes ex- 
cursions to this region of rare antiquarian interest. 



400 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Through the grounds now occupied by Trinity 
Cemetery was constructed one of the southern 
outworks of Fort Washington, and this was the 
first portion to fall in the assault led by General 
Knyphausen, the leader of the Hessian troops. 
They are described as advancing from Kings- 
bridge in two columns, wading across the marshy 
land about the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and scaling 
the precipitous rocky hill, now traversed by the 
Bolton Road. So steep was the acclivity in places 
that the soldiers had to pull themselves up by aid 
of the bushes, and loaded down with the extraor- 
dinary paraphernalia of the German infantry, 
they successfully stormed the bluffs in the face 
of heavy odds and with heavy losses. 

There are neutral-minded people who can find 
it possible to admire the pure soldiery and disci- 
pline of the hired troops who assisted the British 
and the colonial " royalists " in this attack and 
capture. But the rage of our own people against 
the mercenaries was of such endurance that their 
name became a by-word in certain sections, carried 
no doubt into the Southern vernacular by the 
Maryland troops who survived the contact. I can 
remember my mother, in moments of righteous 
wrath, when she always reverted to her Baltimore 
type, hurling the epithet as a final expression of 



INWOOD 401 

denunciation and contempt. " That Hessian! " 
she would say of a local miscreant, with fine scorn 
and blazing eyes, a century and more after the 
word had lost is specific significance. 

Washington Heights have become accessible 
only since the building of the subway. Before 
that the surface cars went no further than Man- 
hattanville, and from there it was an exhilarating 
tramp for the adventurous through the Hollow 
Way to the Hudson, along the railroad tracks 
to Jeffrey's Hook, now known as Fort Washing- 
ton Point, the place where Washington crossed 
to and from Fort Lee, directly opposite on the 
palisades. 

From this point one has a choice of two roads, 
the river road, sheltered on the right by the high 
cliffs, or the highway, known as Fort Washington 
Avenue, over the backbone of the island. This 
roadway, in the old days, led through one private 
estate after another and still retains enough of 
its rural character to invite exploration, especially 
on those cold, sunny days in early spring, or late 
winter, when the New York climate seems to 
present its most alluring character. The James 
Gordon Bennett estate occupied a part of the land 
upon which the fort was situated. Audubon Park, 
further south, was famous as the residence of the 



402 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

ornithologist, his estate, Minniesland, lay above 
One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, between 
Amsterdam Avenue and the river, and is best 
commemorated by the handsome group of build- 
ings given by Archer M. Huntington, of which 
the central feature is the Hispanic Museum. 

Some of the mansions in the upper part of the 
old park have been turned into road-houses where 
one can almost induce the illusion of European 
charm in dining in the open and looking out over 
the finest of prospects. 

North of Inwood the greater part of the land 
belonged to the Dyckman property, of which the 
only tangible vestige is the so-called Dyckman 
House, upon which one comes suddenly and unex- 
pectedly after descending the hill through the 
rambling village of Inwood, into the gorge cut by 
Broadway, not far from the twelfth milestone. 
The house, very much renovated and spruced up, 
stands on high ground, from which the street has 
been levelled and graded, and after years of uncer- 
tain existence rests in tolerable security as city 
property. The builder of the house, William 
Dyckman, was a grandson of the original settler, 
who came over from Westphalia, in 1666, and 
built a house on the Sherman Creek, to the north- 
west of the present dwelling, near the Hudson 




Rct'odu 



THE DUCHESS OF ALBA, BY GOYA 
HISPANIC MUSEUM (PAGE 402) 



INWOOD 403 

River. The Dyckmans became staunch patriots, 
in recognition of which William Dyckman was 
exiled for seven years during the British occupa- 
tion, and his first house burned. 

Of the very few houses still standing in New 
York built before 1800, the Dyckman House is 
one of the oldest and quaintest. Its proportions 
are unpretentious, for it was a simple farmhouse; 
but the two Dyckman daughters, who presented it 
to the city, in 1916, have spared no trouble or 
expense in outfitting it with family heirlooms and 
Revolutionary trophies found in the neighbour- 
hood, and in making the house as homelike and 
intimate as a public museum can hope to be. 

The Van Cortlandt Mansion does the same edu- 
cational work on a larger scale, presenting, by 
means of period furniture, costumes, kitchen 
utensils, and the like, a faithful reproduction of 
the simple, comfortable living of our forefathers. 
The house, with its terraced garden leading down 
to the lake front, has the unique advantage of 
preserving all of its setting, of which the Dyck- 
man House, as well as Claremont, the Jumel 
Mansion, and Hamilton Grange, have been ruth- 
lessly shorn. There is an interesting relationship 
through several of these houses, of which the par- 
ent may be said to be the manor house at Yonkers. 



404 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Philipse not only gave the land upon which the 
Roger Morris house was built, he owned the estate 
upon which the Van Cortlandt house stands, 
having sold it to Jacobus Van Cortlandt, who mar- 
ried his step-daughter, Eva. The house built by 
their son Frederick is reputed to be modelled 
after the style of the Philipse homestead. In 
1884 the entire Van Cortlandt estate, with other 
property, amounting to over a thousand acres, was 
acquired by the city and formed into Van Cort- 
landt Park, stretching east of Broadway and up 
to the city line. 



XX 

BROOKLYN 

The Sculpture of Frederick MacMonnies 

Some intelligent person has discovered that 
" Good times are from within." Taking this 
statement with its largest suggestion of philo- 
sophic truth, it goes without saying that the source 
upon whose fertility ultimate dependence rests, 
in one's quest for pleasure, must be furnished and 
replenished constantly if it is to be drawn upon 
with any hope of adequate response. 

It must be confessed that Brooklyn herself puts 
her case badly. The town has practically never 
been laid out. It started out a few years later 
than New York with an half dozen or more little 
settlements; a main street developed from the 
straggling path that led up the hill from the early 
ferry; little by little these settlements became 
united, until, after nearly two centuries of exist- 
ence, they achieved in their combined strength the 
dignity of a city. 

These little villages had been the unconscious 

405 



406 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

outgrowth of the farms that hned the East River 
shore, with the central village of Breuchelyn, lying 
about a mile above the ferry. None of them had 
definite form. Each had crooked streets and 
lanes, created merely as convenience demanded 
communication between the burghers' houses and 
the narrow lane, now Fulton Street, that con- 
stituted the main artery of simple traffic. 

When Brooklyn was granted her charter as a 
city, in 1834, it is amusing to read that the pre- 
occupation of Mr. Henry E. Pierrepont, who was 
" appointed to lay out a new city," was to estab- 
lish a beautiful cemetery to rival Mount Auburn, 
which he had seen and admired during a recent 
visit to Boston. The wooded heights of Gowanus 
appealed to him as presenting the most favourable 
features for his scheme; and how hungry was the 
population for something beautiful we may know 
when we read that the cemetery became, in a sense, 
its first public park, and that the young folks of 
the early Victorian era promenaded with their 
lovers amongst the graves of the dead, over the 
superb hills of Greenwood, overlooking the bay 
and the Sound. 

Prospect Park came into existence some forty 
years later, and after that something wonderful 
happened to Brooklyn. There was a great period 



BROOKLYN 407 

of renaissance, a strong civic movement headed 
by men of character and remarkable taste. These 
men constituted the Park Commission, and they 
gave to the city what is to-day its finest asset — 
the sculpture of Frederick MacMonnies. 

The few grains of wheat that Brooklyn 
yields to the sympathetic search of the loiterer 
are of a quality whose superiority is inversely 
proportionate to its quantity. To arrive at that 
good time that lies within, and by grace of which 
one may have wonderful emotions in these ugly 
crowded streets and along the sordid water front, 
it is well to saturate one's self with the literature 
of the subject before taking the plunge. 

There is no more romantic reading in fiction 
than the story of the Battle of Long Island 
enacted along the heights of the present city, from 
its lead in from the distant Gravesend Bay, across 
the plains of Flatbush, over the hills of Gowanus, 
through Prospect Park, to its final vital moment 
of retreat from the locality of the Fulton Ferry. 

The story of the Prison Ship Martyrs, glori- 
ously commemorated by that magnificent monu- 
ment on Fort Greene, is one of the most moving, 
tremendous tales of heroic bravery that the world 
has known. Stanford White's great column rises 
literally superior to the sordid environment with 



408 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

a sublime architectural message that grips one in 
majestic vindication of the wrongs and sufferings 
of these noble Revolutionary victims upon whose 
principles the foundation of our republic rests. 

Ernest Poole has made vivid the story of the 
harbour, the Heights, the docks. The charming 
old residence section built along the bluff over- 
looking the harbour is still comparatively intact, 
while the aroma of some of Brooklyn's great 
intellects lingers in the Plymouth Church, where 
Beecher held the multitude for religion, by the 
simple power of his oratory, during forty years; 
in some of the quainter and more dilapidated of 
the small frame dwellings, built no doubt, in part, 
by Walt Whitman, in the early days when he aided 
his father in master-carpentry. 

While the richest treasure of the city is Mac- 
Monnies' group of sculpture at Prospect Park, 
there are also Proctor's " Panthers " at another 
entrance, and Shrady's noble equestrian statue of 
Washington at Valley Forge, isolated on the 
Williamsburg Plaza, but making another point 
for pilgrimage. And thus one seems to see, 
through the dull ramifications of a straggling 
endless suburban city, a sort of skeleton, with the 
old Borough Hall in the centre, that might be 
held in the case of some wisely directed heaven- 




WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE,' BY HENRY .\I1.KU IN SHRAUY 
VILLIAMSBURG PLAZA, BROOKLYN (PAGE 408) 



BROOKLYN 409 

sent calamity that would raze block after block 
of undesirability and wipe out whole sections, 
leaving for future splendour a nucleus of such 
features as might be marked for passover. 

The fact of MacMonnies' birth on the Brooklyn 
Heights must be understood as the last reason for 
his being chosen to make for his native city that 
important group of sculpture that marks the 
formal entrance to Prospect Park. It was merely 
by a fortuitous chain of circumstances and the 
settled evidence of his entire capability that the 
interesting commission, including the quadriga, 
the two groups for the arch, the four eagles on 
the standards of the plaza, marking the vestibule 
to the park, the equestrian statue of General 
S locum on the Eastern Parkway, and the stand- 
ing figure of General Woodward, was awarded 
by the Park Commission to Frederick MacMon- 
nies at the outset of his brilliant career. To this 
was added later the portrait statue of James 
S. T. Stranahan, within the entrance to the park, 
the "Horse Tamers," two companion groups of 
rearing horses, at one of the southern exits, and 
the little Duck Boy Fountain, in the Vale of 
Cachemere. 

MacMonnies was born before the close of the 



410 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Civil War. His birthplace was one of the agree- 
able old houses near the water front; his boyhood 
was spent in one of those beautiful country places, 
now included in the borough and planted thick 
with stupid hives of a swarming population. 
What incentive there was in the New York and 
Brooklyn of the pre- Centennial period to suggest 
to a boy an artistic career it is impossible to imag- 
ine, and the sculptor himself has amusingly de- 
scribed the city of his early recollection as in the 
first enthusiastic grip of the brown-stone blight, 
where the ambition of every house and every 
street was to duplicate its neighbour; a state of 
intellectual torpidity with which its citizens were 
well satisfied. It must be said that the country 
contributed to this complacence, and that brown- 
stone fronts were considered the quintessence of 
elegance; they were liberally copied by other 
cities, the rage for this unpleasant substance ex- 
tending as far as the Pacific coast, where, in 
San Francisco, some early houses still remain 
to bear witness to its potent influence. 

Inside the houses were as uninspiring as with- 
out. Each one had the same engravings, the same 
chromos, the same Rogers' groups. 

The Metropolitan Museum was little more than 
a struggling idea, and for sculpture presented a 



BROOKLYN 411 

nucleus consisting of one colossal bust of William 
Cullen Bryant and a few minor atrocities. There 
were no casts from the antique, and the Cesnola 
Collection, with its rich revelation of beauty, was 
still unknown. 

The aridity of the streets, now lined with hand- 
some shops displaying every form of objet d'art, 
is inconceivable, and MacMonnies speaks feelingly 
of frequent trips down to Washington Square to 
feast his famished eyes on the little brass-lettered 
sign affixed to the doorway of the Benedict, and 
the only ornamental object of its kind applied to 
the architecture of our city. This had been de- 
signed by Stanford White and made by Louis 
Saint Gaudens. It is still there, its beauty 
enhanced by constant polishing, a charming little 
relic — a first tiny wedge of good taste. 

As a youth, MacMonnies went to Saint Gaudens 
as " studio boy," working as apprentice pupil at 
the time of that sculptor's greatest productivity; 
growing up there under favoured circumstances, 
for the studio was the resort of the best architects, 
sculptors, and painters of the country. In Saint 
Gaudens' atelier MacMonnies first came to the 
notice of Stanford White, then a young man of 
twenty-one years. MacMonnies thought him " as 
old as the hills," and was amused to find in after 



412 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

years, when they had become friends, that there 
was but five years difference in their ages. 

Saint Gaudens had akeady laid the foundation 
of the young sculptor's taste, and under him Mac- 
Monnies developed extraordinary manual skill. 
His was a fine influence, everything he did had 
taste and quality besides a fund of poetic feeling. 
Stanford White took to MacMonnies from the 
first and saw his possibilities with that unerring 
instinct for selection that made him so valuable 
a force in matters of art. In those early days he 
turned over to the young student some of the 
ornamental work on the Villard house, that great 
palace of brownstone designed by White, at Fifty- 
first and Madison Avenue. It is still a beautiful 
house, but in those days it stood out as a pioneer 
amongst fine things, and it created a new standard 
of beauty. 

Then MacMonnies went to Europe (in 1884), 
and studied with Falguiere; and, working the 
Beaux Arts, he twice won the pria: d'atelier, the 
highest prize open to foreigners. His first statue, 
a Diana, won him an honourable mention at the 
Salon of 1889, and then, through Stanford White, 
came his first commission, the three adoring angels 
for the Church of the Paulist Fathers, surmount- 
ing the high altar designed by the architect. Small 



BROOKLYN 413 

commissions followed during the next few years, 
when MacMonnies made, through White, the 
" Pan of Rohalli^," the " Boy with Heron," for 
Mr. Choate, the spandrels for the Bowery Bank, 
the angels for the Washington Arch, and the 
West Point " Victory." 

By this time the young sculptor began to get 
his footing, and his first important public com- 
mission, the statue of Nathan Hale, made in 
Paris, in 1890, fixed his reputation for all time. 
After this success he was awarded, at the sugges- 
tion of Saint Gaudens, the famous Columbia 
Fountain, for the Chicago Exposition, at which 
so many of our present sculptors made their 
debuts. The fountain, whose chief requisite was 
to be " style," MacMonnies conceived as an im- 
posing composition with twenty-seven colossal 
figures, surmounted by " Columbia," enthroned 
upon the central mass of a great white ship. 

It was then, when the sculptor was not more 
than twenty-seven years of age, that an extraor- 
dinary thing happened in Brooklyn. Prospect 
Park, which had been laid out about 1780 as a 
place of recreation and amusement for its citi- 
zens, became the centre of civic ambition, and a 
group of broad-minded and remarkable men, con- 
stituting the Park Commission, handed over to 



414 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Frederick MacMonnies the inclusive scheme of 
sculpture that was to make it notable among the 
parks of the world. These men were Frank 
Squier, Colonel Woodward, Mr. de Silva, Elijah 
Kennedy, General Woodward, and Augustus 
Healy. Convinced of his ability and confident of 
the outcome, these gentlemen gave MacMonnies 
perfect liberty, untrammelled and unhampered by 
suggestion or criticism. 

The Army and Navy triumphal arch, which 
presented the base of operations, was already 
standing, having been designed some years pre- 
vious by John H. Duncan, architect. Its only 
sculptures were the two equestrian reliefs of 
Lincoln and Grant on the piers within the arch- 
way. These stiff, archaic panels by Thomas 
Eakins and William Rudolf O'Donovan bear the 
dates 1893-94. Mr. Eakins modelled the horses 
and O'Donovan made the riders, and there is a 
quaint story of the two artists posing for one an- 
other and of their exhaustive search for the right 
horses, which ended in A. J. Cassatt lending his 
celebrated mount, " Chnker," for Grant's horse, 
while " Billy," upon whom sits, or rather is em- 
bedded, Lincoln, was a western steed. The work 
went forward in Mr. Eakins' improvised studio 
at Avondale, below Philadelphia; there he made 




PORTRAIT STATUE OF JAMES S. T. STRAXAHAX 
BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES (PAGE 4I9) 



BROOKLYN 415 

many studies and fine casts for his part of the 
reliefs, rather pluming himself upon making the 
models with one bucket of clay; working con- 
trary to all accepted methods, in sections, and 
casting the parts and putting them together 
afterwards. 

Works of art they are not, though there is in 
the modelling of the horses that sincerity which 
characterizes everything that Eakins did in paint- 
ing, and as the sculpture of a painter of very 
remarkable accomplishment they possess much 
antiquarian interest. We know that Eakins was 
deeply scientific by nature, and that he had made 
before he tackled this problem (1884) those won- 
derful anatomic horses, owned by the schools of 
the Pennsylvania Academy, and also that he 
assisted Meybridge with his experiments in instan- 
taneous photography, making exhaustive records 
of equine motion. And all of this definite and 
accurate information concerning the anatomy of 
the horse comes out in these reliefs. But Eakins 
went into the matter so thoroughly and conscien- 
tiously that he lost sight of the bigger problem; 
and as for O'Donovan, he seems to have moved in 
sublime ignorance of the fundamental facts of 
sculpture and beyond the warmth of the sacred 
fire of genius. His men are droll caricatures of 



416 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the heroes they are supposed to represent. Lin- 
coln sits stiffly, his right arm extended downward, 
with the hand holding a quaint old top hat, as if 
to catch the stones with which the bad boys of the 
neigbourhood used to keep it constantly filled. 

The arch was badly designed, and when it was 
decided to add the quadriga to the top and the 
reliefs to the piers a change of administration 
enabled the Park Commission to engage Stanford 
White as architect of the proposed features. He 
built out the bases for the groups and tried to 
make something of it, but the arch is a failure, 
architecturally, despite MacMonnies' splendid 
work. Had he been older and more experienced 
he no doubt would have refused the commission, 
realizing its difficulties. But he was under thirty, 
and carried away by the opportunity to do big 
things. Youth and exuberance conquered judg- 
ment, and MacMonnies threw himself into the 
designing and modelling of the three enormous 
bronze groups — the quadriga surmounting the 
arch, " The Army " and " The Navy," decorating 
the piers facing the entrance to the park. 

In this work MacMonnies showed the abundant 
results of his study and experience abroad. 
"Nothing finer than 'The Army,'" says Taft, 
" has been done since Rude carved ' Le Depart '." 



BROOKLYN 417 

Yet, as he goes on to say, there is no tangible 
point of resemblance. They have the same im- 
pulse, the same effect of having been thrown off 
by an irresistible force as from an inexhaustible 
fountain of energy. They have abundance of 
invention, genius for arrangement in which the 
lines and contours seem to flow of themselves to 
the proper balance, dexterity of surface modelling, 
and a rich sense of beauty and strength. 

The panels are treated as reliefs, though the 
figures are largely in the round, and the two sub- 
jects, while following the same effective massing 
of light and shade and general weight and de- 
sign present contrasting emotions. " The Army " 
MacMonnies has said he conceived as an explo- 
sion — " a mass hurled against a stone wall and 
which, bursting in all directions, was petrified as 
it flew." This effect is carried by the agitated 
contour, bristling with bayonets carried by the 
soldiers in active combat, dominated by the figure 
of the officer with uplifted sword, whose faflen 
horse gives bulk to the lower portion of the group. 
The whole warlike message is emphasized by the 
trumpeting figure of Bellona, on a great winged 
steed which fills the upper part of the composition, 
adding immensely to the colour and variety of the 
bronze. 



418 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

In " The Navy " MacMonnies pictures the re- 
verse side of war, the quiet heroism wherein life 
is laid down for country with none of the spec- 
tacular accompaniment of active battle. The 
moment is one of dramatic intensity augmented 
by its simple reserve, its passive acceptance of 
doom. The men are standing close together on 
the deck of a sinking ship, awaiting their fate 
with unflinching devotion to duty. 

In the apotheosis of America, who, with battle 
flag and draperies blown by the wind, stands erect 
in her chariot drawn by four slender horses and 
heralded by two winged Victories, which makes 
the subject of the great quadriga that surmounts 
the arch, there is no equivocal sentiment. Through- 
out the sculpture on the arch one feels with full 
force the fundamental elements of war — war 
backed by a glorious cause; held by staunch men 
and true; won through courage, devotion, hero- 
ism, sacrifice; favoured by deities; exulted in 
by gods. 

In the spacious setting, with its two ornamental 
pavilions, its four fluted columns, surmounted each 
by a large bronze globe and eagle, we have White's 
design — the eagles modelled by MacMonnies. 

To the immediate left of the entrance, standing 
as a welcoming host, is MacMonnies' bronze statue 



BROOKLYN 419 

of Brooklyn's " first citizen," James S. T. Strana- 
han, during whose long administration as presi- 
dent of the Park Commission Prospect Park was 
created, and to whose suggestion is due the system 
of boulevards and the Ocean and Eastern Park- 
ways. MacMonnies describes him in words and 
presents him in bronze as a delightful person — 
pohshed, courteous, broad-minded, simple, unsel- 
fish — the very acme of all that a citizen should be. 
In the summer of 1891 his fellow citizens erected 
" during his lifetime and unveiled in his presence " 
(so runs the legend on the pedestal) this unusual 
tribute to his worth. The sculptor himself drew 
the veil from his work on this impressive occasion. 
In this statue of a charming old gentleman, 
sympathetically and simply done, presenting him 
as a figure true to its time, one feels the perfection 
of the ideals for which those earher American 
sculptors heroically struggled. What Kirke Brown 
and Ward hoped for the future of American 
sculpture, MacMonnies has taken and enveloped 
with his deeper sense of beauty and richer fund 
of expression. The Stranahan statue epitomizes 
the movement fathered by these pioneers in their 
stand against the neo-classic, and as such its im- 
portance as a veritable contribution to the sum 
total of knowledge in the art of sculpture cannot 



420 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

be overestimated. Of it Taft says, " Nothing 
truer has been done in our day." 

The personahty of the man is the first and last 
impression, and every phase of the enthusiastic 
modelHng has been so treated as to contribute to 
that profound characterization, which is its most 
striking attribute. The problem of the modern 
costume has been faced squarely, even to the detail 
of the quaint silk hat, held in the right bare hand. 
The left hand is gloved and holds the other glove 
and stick, while over the arm is thrown an over- 
coat. The pose has the simplicity of greatness, 
the costume is unconventional without the untidi- 
ness suggested in Ward's Beecher, before Borough 
Hall. 

MacMonnies felt delight in the work, making 
many studies of the model and bearing them away 
to France, where the statue was completed and 
cast, which partly accounts for the interesting 
patine the bronze has gained through exposure. 
After it was finished and unveiled, Stranahan was 
so pleased with his effigy that he and his wife used 
to drive down the plaza and he would be photo- 
graphed standing beside the statue — they thought 
it so like. 

Within the park, bearing to the left from the 
plaza entrance and following a devious and con- 



BROOKLYN 421 

fusing route through rose gardens and other 
pretty features of this graceful enclosure, a path 
leads unexpectedly down through dense fohage into 
what is known as the Vale of Cachemere. Here 
amidst laurel and rhododendron bushes lies, partly 
concealed, a tiny Hly pond, and in the centre of 
this lily pond, its border strengthened and en- 
riched by a stone parapet, designed by Stanford 
White, one comes upon MacMonnies' radiant 
Duck Boy Fountam, a diminutive ruddy bronze 
figure of a baby holding a struggling mother duck, 
from whose mouth, opened in distressed cries, 
emits the sparkling stream of water. The baby 
is very little and joyous, its head is turned to one 
side, its small arms barely able to hold the captive 
bird. He stands with one foot on the back of a 
turtle, the heel of the other hghtly touching the 
ground. Four tiny ducklings stand, as it were, 
on tiptoe, flapping their embryonic wings and 
screaming in vain effort to reach their mother. 
These, flattened against the yellow marble pedes- 
tal, are united by festoons of water lilies. At 
some distance from the boy, four turtles emerge 
from the surface and throw jets of water upon 
the group. The whole effect is very playful and 
charming. The rich colour of the bronze is the 
accidental patine of time, one of the most fasci- 



422 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

nating qualities of bronze. In winter this figure 
is taken in and the pond is used by the children for 
skating. 

Those stupendous groups known as the " Horse 
Tamers " flank an exit at the opposite side of the 
park, through which lies the favourite route to 
Coney Island. These fantastic groups express 
the exuberance of the sculptor's most prolific 
period, when his genius bubbled forth almost un- 
controllably, and he was ready for every difficulty. 
For sheer manual dexterity the things are amaz- 
ing; for decorative value their force is overwhelm- 
ing; yet these rearing chargers with their slender 
riders seem to have come as easily from the 
sculptor's brain as the little "Piping Pan of 
Rohalhon" or the charming fountains of the 
Knickerbocker Hotel. 

These, with the equestrian statue of General 
S locum, the hero of Bull Run, and the standing 
figure of MacMonnies' friend and patron, General 
Woodward, constitute the sculptor's extraordinary 
contribution to Brookljrn. " During the ten years 
of his greatest activity," says Taft, "he created 
more good sculpture than any contemporary — 
more than most do in a lifetime." With the ex- 
ception of the Nathan Hale before the City Hall 
in New York, the flower of MacMonnies' work 




THE HORSE TAMER. BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES 
PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN (PAGE 422) 



BROOKLYN 423 

during the first decade of his productivity is 
in Brooklyn. All of it was shown in Paris at the 
different salons, gaining the sculptor, as a final 
recompense, the Legion d'Honneur in 1896. It 
is interesting to note that now, in his maturity, 
MacMonnies is making for Princeton a battle 
monument embodying the ideas of the Army and 
Navy Arch rehefs, in which one sees the rich de- 
velopment of his life and work, in a group sur- 
mounted by the figure of Washington, which has 
all the youthful enthusiasm, to which is added a 
riper grasp of the essentials of form, balance, and 
composition. 

The firm of McKim, Mead and White gave 
Brooklyn its beautiful museum building, a con- 
sistent edifice devoted to art, natural history, and 
ethnology, standing on Eastern Parkway not far 
from the Plaza. The outside sculptures are by 
Herbert Adams, Daniel Chester French, Henry 
Augustus Lukemen, Kenyon Cox, Attilio Picci- 
rilh, Karl Bitter, George T. Brewster, Edward 
C. Potter, Janet Scudder, Charles Keck, Edmund 
T. Quinn, John Gelert, and Carl A. Heber. 

The outgrowth of the Brooklyn Institute of 
Arts and Sciences, the museum is a composite of 
the three departments mentioned and covers a 
wide field of activity. The art section contains 



424 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

several features, notably the series of the " Life 
of Christ," by James J. J. Tissot, presented, in 
1900, by the citizens of Brooklyn; the collections 
of water colours by Winslow Homer and John 
Singer Sargent; the interesting panels painted 
for the Church of the Paulist Fathers by John 
La Farge; and Boldini's impressive portrait of 
James McNeill Whistler. 



XXI 

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 

The Battle of Long Island has left notable 
traces throughout the city of Brooklyn, envelop- 
ing its surface mediocrity with peculiar romance 
and charm. One should look at a map to get the 
features of the island well in mind. The hill 
range which forms the backbone of Long Island, 
and upon whose slopes Walt Whitman was born, 
terminates on the west in Brooklyn Heights, and 
forms the general line followed in the course of 
that momentous first avowed battle of the Revolu- 
tion. 

We are to reconstruct for better understanding 
the series of small towns and villages that lined 
the coast, looking towards New York, and lying 
upon the East River and the harbour. Since 1642 
a public ferry has been established between Man- 
hattan and Long Island, whose landing-places 
were at Peck's Shp, in New York, and the foot 
of the present Fulton Street, in Brooklyn. These 
old villages, whose names in more or less cor- 

425 



426 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

rupted form are still preserved, were practically 
contemporaneous, the land having been parcelled 
out by the early governors to the Dutch settlers 
and patroons. 

The first settlement appears to have been at 
Gowanus, to the south of the ferry; Van Twiller 
appropriated a grant at Roode Hoek, so called 
from its rich red soil — the name still preserved, 
not only in the nomenclature of the coast line, 
but in a small street, called Red Hook Lane, not 
far from Borough Hall. Amongst the earliest 
settlers were the Walloons, who came to America 
in numbers early in the seventeenth century. 
These were Huguenots, who had sought refuge in 
Holland from religious persecution, and they 
founded Waal-Bogt, or the Bay of the Foreigners 
(corrupted to read Wallabout), a district lying 
on the East River, above that deep indentation 
where is situated the Navy Yard. Gravesend 
was originally an English settlement, granted by 
Kieft to Lady Deborah Moody, but the English 
strain was soon lost, and the name s'Gravensande 
(the Count's Beach) was taken from the Dutch 
town on the river Maas. Ferry Village sprung 
up about the neighbourhood of the ferry, while 
Breuckelen received its charter about 1643, and 
was a small central hamlet along the straggling 



BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 427 

country road, a mile above the ferry. About 
twelve years previous to the Revolution this nar- 
row lane became the first post road through Long 
Island. 

To cover the territory involved in the Battle of 
Long Island one should grasp the essential land- 
marks extending between Gravesend Bay, way 
down below the Narrows, near Coney Island, 
where Howe landed with his force of 20,000 men, 
and Fort Greene Park, then Fort Putnam, where 
Washington had concentrated 9,000 soldiers, con- 
stituting one-half of the American army. This 
high ground still commands an impressive view, 
but in those days, before the city was built up, it 
not only overlooked the city of New York and the 
East River, it commanded an extensive range of 
Long Island and the four ancient roads taken by 
the British in their advance from Gravesend. 

These four roads led away from the bay by 
way of Bedford, Flatbush, Jamaica, and the shore 
line to Gowanus, whence an inland road cut 
across country to Brooklyn village. Washington, 
Putnam, Sullivan, and Stirling were the heroes 
of the battle, their names, simply, being inscribed 
on a tablet at the intersection of Fulton Street and 
Flatbush Avenue. Washington distributed his 
scanty store of men as best he could, fortifying 



428 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

three of the four means of approach; while Howe, 
quickly recognizing the strategic importance of 
the unguarded roundabout road by way of 
Jamaica, took that himself, sending two High- 
land regiments, under General Grant, by the 
shore road and a column of Hessians, under Gen- 
eral von Heister, by the middle pass. 

To follow the course of the battle one must 
follow the heights. Stirling formed a line all the 
way from Battle Hill, in Greenwood Cemetery, 
to Gowanus Bay; Sullivan held the roads through 
the dense woods by way of Bedford and Flatbush. 
Both came to grief and were outnumbered and 
captured after a brave fight. A day of disaster 
to the Americans closed with an exhibition of de- 
voted bravery on the part of the Maryland Regi- 
ment, which held back the British until their com- 
panions could reach safety, and, as the phrase is, 
" saved the American Army." 

We read of Washington standing on Lookout 
Hill, in Prospect Park, watching the advance of 
the British against the inadequate forces under 
General Stirling; of his amazement and emotion 
when, instead of surrendering, Stirling turned 
against the adversary to give battle. It was at 
this sight that Washington is said to have wrung 
his hands and cried: "Good God! What brave 



BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 429 

fellows I must this day lose." The sentence is 
inscribed on the pedestal of the Maryland Monu- 
ment, designed by White, and erected in honour 
of Maryland's Four Hundred. 

The retreat after the battle carries the reader 
across the heights into the old part of the town 
along the bluff overlooking the river, and down to 
the water's edge, a region in which all landmarks 
have been obliterated; yet the conformation of the 
ground is the same, and one can picture the terri- 
ble panic and confusion at the site of the present 
ferry, where the troops were gathered to make 
their escape in the motley assemblage of river 
craft which Washington in secret had prepared for 
them. The council which decided the retreat was 
held in the old Pierrepont House, at the head of 
the bluffs, at what is now No. 1 Pierrepont Place, 
a handsome brown-stone residence still in the pos- 
session of that family. This house occupies the 
site of the original colonial dwelling. 

According to the plan, none of the soldiers and 
few of the officers knew what was in the wind 
when, after dark, the latter were ordered to get 
their regiments under arms for a night attack 
upon the enemy. When the troops had fallen into 
line, instead of marching towards the British camp, 
to their surprise they found themselves descending 



430 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the steep slopes that led down to the river, and 
when it was understood that they were retreating, 
panic the most violent seized them. The soldiers 
crowded into an indistinguishable mass of officers 
and privates, all obsessed by the one idea of get- 
ting into the boats, which included every sort 
of river craft, both sail and row boats, upon 
which Washington could lay hands. From many 
sources we learn that such disorder prevailed that 
the soldiers in the rear actually climbed upon the 
heads and shoulders of their forward comrades 
and walked over them to the front, leaping pele- 
mele into the boats, in spite of the threats and 
entreaties of their officers, and crowding these to 
such an extent that several boats were nearly 
swamped. When driven at the point of the bayo- 
net from some of the flotilla, the frightened sol- 
diers poured instantly into others, from which 
neither threats nor blows could finally dislodge 
them. 

Washington's anxiety for the safe retreat of 
his army, so gravely jeopardized by this unseemly 
panic, was fast exhausting his patience, and his 
language is described as growing " as vehement 
as his labours had been gigantic." 

" At last his wrath at the insubordination and 
perversity of the men leaped beyond the bounds of 




PORTRAIT OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER, BY GIOVANNI BOLDIN] 
BROOKLYN MUSEUM (PAGE 424) 



BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 431 

his habitual prudence, and, seizing a huge stone, 
which probably few other men in the army could 
even have hfted from the ground, he raised it 
aloft in both hands, and shouted : ' If every man 
in that boat does not instantly leave it, I will sink 
it to hell.' " * 

The voice of the general is said to have been so 
impressive and his gesture so threatening that the 
boats were instantly vacated and the insubordina- 
tion quelled. The retreat occupied the night; 
Washington was the last man to leave the island, 
and the watchers on the bluffs saw his boat for a 
few moments in midstream in the growing dawn 
before the thick fog that put the final touch of 
security to the proceedings closed down over the 
British camp and enveloped the river in impene- 
trable mystery. 

In a section of Brooklyn, rather off the beaten 
track, above the old Huguenot settlement of Wall- 
about, and on beyond the -Brooklyn Navy Yard, 
hes Fort Greene Park, a pretty patch of rescued 
verdure rising to a noble eminence, upon which 
stands the awesome monument to the Prison Ship 
Martyrs of the Revolution. This monument, cer- 
tainly one of the grandest of its type, was amongst 

* " Historic and Antiquarian Scenes in Brooklyn." T. W. Field. 
P. 92. 



432 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

the last things that engaged the art of Stanford 
White. He never saw it in the life, its corner 
stone having been laid a year after his death, but 
he realized it in all its poetic majesty and austere 
aloofness from its crazy environment as perhaps 
his most monumental and distinguished achieve- 
ment. 

The monument takes the simplest form. It 
consists of a great fluted shaft of magnificent 
granite rising straight and with pure lines into 
the air; upon the top a square capital, ornamented 
with walls of Troy, upon which rests a bronze urn. 
This column, standing upon the highest point of 
Fort Greene, is planted in the centre of a square 
granolithic plaza, the ends marked by short shafts 
ornamented each by an eagle resting against the 
base. The approach is from the direction of the 
sea, and consists of three flights of wide granite 
steps with intermediate platforms, on the second 
of which is the descent into the crypt, concealed 
under the steps; and therein are contained the 
bones of the eleven thousand prison ship martyrs 
of baleful history. 

The defeats of the patriots at the Battle of 
Long Island and the subsequent capture of Fort 
Washington gave the British between four and 
five thousand prisoners, and this number was con- 



BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 433 

stantly increased by the arrest of citizens suspected 
of complicity with the so-called " rebellion." The 
prisons in the city of New York being entirely 
inadequate to the situation, some transports that 
had originally been used to bring cattle and other 
war supplies out from England were pressed into 
the abominable service. In all there were seven- 
teen of these hateful prison ships, of which two 
at a time were in service at Wallabout for the 
reception of prisoners. 

The conduct of the prisons by the British offi- 
cials makes desperate reading. Our men were 
thrust aboard these pestilential hulks in incredible 
numbers; and here, in loathsome floating dun- 
geons, denied air and light, scantily fed on poor, 
putrid, often uncooked food; quartered with the 
basest criminals, the sick with the healthy, were 
subjected daily to intolerable insult and indignity. 
They died by thousands, of scourges and starva- 
tion, lying huddled together at night, the dead 
with the living, until the rude morning cry, 
"Rebels, bring out your dead!" ended their hor- 
rid slumbers and brought them to the miseries 
of another dreadful day. One of the prison ships 
was burned, said to have been fired by the inmates 
who preferred death to their long-drawn suffer- 
ings; but the human cargo was merely transferred 



434 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

to another ship, increasing the misfortune of 
both. 

The most infamous of these ships was the 
Jersey, or the Hell, as she was called from the 
number of prisoners confined between her decks, 
often as many as a thousand at a time; and we 
read, in the memoirs of Silas Talbot, that of the 
twenty thousand Americans who died on the 
prison ships throughout the Revolution 11,644 
found that relief upon the Jersey alone. 

These men were constantly offered rations, and 
freedom in the open air, if they would but enlist 
in the service of George III — not necessarily to 
fight directly against their own country, but for 
service in foreign wars, thereby relieving soldiers 
who could then be added to the British forces in 
America. Their fidelity to their newly forming 
country is without parallel in the history of the 
world, and their grim staunchness forms the very 
keystone of our republic. These devoted patriots, 
taken from every one of the thirteen original 
states, numbered more than were killed in all the 
battles both by sea and land in the long and des- 
perate struggle for freedom. 

At the close of the war the survivors were re- 
leased and the old Jersey sank in the mud of 
Wallabout Channel, at a spot now covered by the 



BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 435 

west end of Cob Dock. For many years the bones 
of the martyrs lay bleaching on the banks of the 
Wallabout, where the bodies had been rudely 
buried in shallow pits by the British. The whole 
shore from Rennies Point to Mr. Remsen's farm 
was a place of graves ; many prisoners were buried 
in a ravine of the hill, and " it was no uncommon 
thing to see five or six dead bodies brought on 
shore in a single morning," writes J. Johnson, 
Esq., of Brooklyn, "when a small excavation 
would be dug at the foot of the hill, the bodies 
cast in, and a man with a shovel would cover them 
by shovelling sand down the hill upon them." 
More than half the dead bodies on the other side 
of the Remsen mill pond were washed out by the 
waves at high tide during northeast winds. " The 
bones of the dead lay exposed along the beach, 
drying and bleaching in the sun and whitening 
the shore." 

This distressing state of affairs became a chronic 
topic of complaint to congress; but while every 
one agreed that " something should be done," the 
only practical thing that was accomplished was 
through the activity of John Jackson, a veteran 
of the Revolution, who owned a farm adjoining 
the spot where the Jersey disappeared from view. 
While others talked, he collected the pathetic re- 



436 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

mains of the soldiers with whom he had fought and 
suffered, and when he had several hogsheads of 
bones stored on his farm he made an offer to Tam- 
many to give the land for a monument, if that 
society would undertake its erection. 

Tammany accepted the charge, set about col- 
lecting the balance of the skeletons and, in 1808, 
buried them with imposing ceremonies on the 
Jackson farm in a temporary wooden tomb. This 
became so dilapidated that, in 1873, the Park 
Commission prepared a permanent and imperish- 
able vault on Fort Greene, overlooking the scene 
of suffering. The body of John Jackson, which 
had been interred in the old wooden structure, was 
transferred to the new, and rests with the remains 
of those whose plight he had been the first to miti- 
gate. Later the cause was espoused by the Society 
of Old Brooklynites, whose members secured the 
signatures of 30,000 citizens of New York and 
Brooklyn to a petition asking congress for an ap- 
propriation to build the present monument. 



XXII 
RANDOM DECORATIONS 

Not to appreciate the thing at hand is the order 
of our civihzation. We rush madly about on 
busy errands, absorbed in the commonplace, until 
quite exhausted, and then — until now it has been 
the custom — hie us to Europe to take, in great 
gulps, all the aesthetics that can be crammed into 
one short summer, on the theory that such things 
are the inherent and peculiar dower of the old 
country, and that while America is an excellent 
place for dollars one must not trust its art. 

But now that we are to be turned in upon our- 
selves for higher development, it behooves us to 
take stock of the art resources of the country, to 
study and recognize the efforts of the earlier build- 
ers of our cities — the architects, sculptors, and 
painters, whose lives were spent in the considera- 
tion of beauty in its relation to human life. 

About the decorations of the public buildings 
of New York an almost hostile indifference pre- 
vails; when the subject does come into discussion, 

437 



438 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

current writers take perverse pleasure in holding 
up to ridicule such attempts as are made to embel- 
lish the city — to give it some other than a purely 
commercial character. Of destructive criticism 
there is an abundance; of intelligent appreciation 
very little. That a building or a tower is the high- 
est in the history of the world ; that a bridge is the 
longest, a railway terminal the largest, or an hotel 
the most expensive, is the kind of information 
that with us finds ready credence; even a statue 
can become famous in this land of superlatives if 
only it can be said that it is " the greatest colossus 
in the civihzed world," and that the pedestal rests 
securely upon a foundation which is " a monohth 
of concrete reputed to be the largest artificial 
single stone in existence." 

These highly uninteresting and unimportant 
facts are freely disseminated and become common 
gossip; everybody knows them. But who, aside 
from the cognoscenti, knows or cares that Kirke 
Brown's Washington, in Union Square, ranks 
amongst the few really great equestrian statues of 
the world, and should be revered by all good 
Americans, not only for the monumental charac- 
ter which it immortalizes, but as the work of one 
of the earliest American-born sculptors, and the 
first to conceive an American school? 




DETAIL OF "earth"' PANEL IN THE DEY STREET FAgADE OF THE 
WESTERN UNION BUILDING. PAUL MANSHIP, SCULPTOR (PAGE 439) 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 439 

How many of the throng that presses daily 
before the Stock Exchange stop to bestow a pass- 
ing glance upon its handsome pediment, or turn 
to do homage to Ward's great masterpiece upon 
the steps of the Sub-Treasury? The Woolworth 
Building is famous for its height; who ever con- 
siders the beautiful detail of its lacy tower? One 
who stops in the Hall of Records to admire the 
rich stone mosaic of the entrance lobby, the work 
of William de Leftwich Dodge, or upon busy Dey 
Street to view the panels of the four elements, 
made by Paul Manship, on the new building of 
the American Telegraph and Telephone Com- 
pany, does so at his own risk, and is looked upon 
almost with suspicion by the preoccupied public, 
scurrying along in quest of the chinking coin. 

Yet how handsome are these things! One quite 
longs to stem the tide, to take the passers-by gently 
by the hand and deflect them from their frenzied 
course; for within the monster edifice on Dey 
Street is a frieze of putti in Paul Manship's most 
delightful manner, while imbedded in the marble 
floor, within the Broadway entrance, is a circular 
device in bronze — a sort of seal of the company — 
designed by the same clever artist. The " Genius 
of Telegraphy," only very lately conveyed to the 
pinnacle of the building, is by Evelyn Beatrice 



440 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Longman — a strong and stirring figure sym- 
bolizing the mysterious force behind the gigantic 
operations of the service. 

At the risk, indeed the certainty, of being con- 
sidered a hopeless " nut," I penetrated the interior 
of one of the great downtown banks one day in 
search of certain decorative spandrels to which a 
fellow artist had directed me. I encountered, 
coupled with utmost kindness and attentive- 
ness, a staggering vagueness, until I was finally 
passed along to the treasurer of the company, 
who received me and my curious tale with even 
more tenderness and consideration, looking at me 
with tired grey eyes and with a visible effort dis- 
lodging his brain from really important matters. 
" And what are spandrels? " quoth he, when I 
had finished, with whimsical simplicity. 

The eagerness to help in what most officials con- 
nected with the various hotels, court-houses, thea- 
tres, banks, and public buildings containing sculp- 
ture or mural painting evidently consider a most 
unnatural curiosity concerning objects which to 
themselves are as so much masonry and wall- 
paper, is truly pathetic. It is like opening the 
eyes of the blind to call their attention to what 
stands before them, while the information given 
out in answer to questions is often alarming. I 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 441 

have been told, for instance, that some of the 
windows in the Church of the Ascension were by- 
Saint Gaudens! When I asked at Saint Luke's 
Hospital for the author of the beautiful window 
in the chapel, which I afterwards verified as the 
work of Henry Holiday, no one visible in the 
institution had the faintest idea, nor was able to 
lay hands on any data concerning it. When I 
made inquiries in another church, currently, but 
erroneously, reported to contain windows by 
Burne-Jones, the young curate that was finally 
persuaded to see me — in this case there was no 
eagerness — seemed positively proud of his igno- 
rance of matters that could only be interesting to 
a builder, and with a supercilious lift of an eccle- 
siastic eyebrow seemed to insinuate: "Who are 
the Jones'? With Hendrick Brevoort buried in 
our vestibule, what know we of such vulgarians? " 
While not all of the best decorations and sculp- 
ture done by American artists for America are 
concentrated in New York, the city, especially if 
one stretches a point to include the two court- 
houses of Jersey City and Newark, which are 
elaborately decorated, furnishes an interesting 
field for the study of what the movement has ac- 
complished in this country within the last quarter 
of a century. 



442 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

We have accepted the Centennial Exhibition, 
of 1876, as the birthday of decoration in America 
— the Columbian Exposition, of 1893, as its 
official coming of age. This " coming-out party " 
was presided over by a number of distinguished 
architects, each of which introduced, as it were, 
his own particular debutantes. George B. 
Post brought forward Blashfield, Weir, Reid, 
Simmons, Beckwith, Reinhardt, Shirlaw, and Cox 
— all men of more or less distinguished accomplish- 
ment in other fields of painting; and these were 
the decorators of the eight small domes of his 
Palace of the Liberal Arts. Richard M. Hunt 
discovered the great natural ability of William 
de Leftwich Dodge, who as a mere youth, fresh 
from the Paris schools, had proven his fluency in 
the painting of the famous panorama of the Chi- 
cago fire, and for the architect he painted the enor- 
mous dome of the Administration Building. 

Some of these painters — notably Dodge, Reid, 
Simmons, Cox, and Blashfield — received through 
the experience gained in the exposition and their 
attendant success a permanent bent for decoration, 
for which immediately following the close of the 
World's Fair there was a great demand. The 
effect of the ephemeral work at Chicago was 
deepened by the success of the two great libraries 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 443 

of Boston and Washington, decorated at about this 
time, employing aknost every mural painter of dis- 
tinction of native birth and bringing to this coun- 
try the work of the greatest of French decorators, 
Puvis de Chavannes. 

Paris had already set the admirable example of 
securing for its public edifices a record of what 
contemporary French painters could do in the 
field of decoration, and most of our artists, trained 
either under these or with them, came back filled 
with a desire to express for America what their 
French contemporaries had expressed for France 
— to establish with some degree of permanence 
the record of national achievement in the same 
direction. 

Perhaps the supply created the demand. Cer- 
tainly the demand reached the supply, and Hunt 
and Post, in their subsequent architectural ven- 
tures, utilized the genius at hand with delightful 
enthusiasm. The first private residence to be dec- 
orated after the exposition was that of CoUis P. 
Huntington, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh 
Street, built by George B. Post and decorated by 
Blashfield, Francis Lathrop, Mowbray, and Ved- 
der. Mr. Post secured much admirable decora- 
tion for the Cornelius Vanderbilt house, across 
the way, including Saint Gaudens' handsome 



444 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

mantelpiece; and imported the wonderful Baudry 
ceiling, afterwards presented by Mr. Vanderbilt 
to the Century Theatre and installed in the foyer, 
with accessories painted by James Wall Finn. 
This ceiling panel, by the distinguished decorator 
of the foyer of the Paris Opera House, is one of 
the chief mural treasures of New York. 

Through the younger Hunt, Blashfield made 
" The Sword Dance," a lunette for the Gothic 
supper room of William K. Vanderbilt, and two 
panels — " Fortitude " and " Vigilance " — for each 
side of the chimneypiece ; and later, for Arnold 
Brunner, he made the exquisite decorations for the 
residence of Adolph Lewisohn, in Fifty-seventh 
Street, all of which have been removed and in- 
stalled in Mr. Lewisohn's new house, below Mr. 
Frick's, on the Avenue. The ceiling panel, rep- 
resenting " The Music of Antiquity," is placed in 
the music room, and another panel, "Florentine 
Dance," is in the great main hall. 

Simmons' splendid " Justice," attended by " The 
Rights of Man " and the " Fates," for the Crimi- 
nal Courts Building, was one of the first mural 
paintings to be placed in a public edifice in New 
York. It was done in 1895, directly after the 
success of the decorations of the World's Fair, 
and in the full tide of enthusiastic production 




"THE MUSIC OF ANTIQUITY." CEILING DECORATION IX RESIDENCE OF 
MR. ADOLPH LEWISOHN, BY EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD (PAGE 444) 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 445 

which marks this artist's finest period. The Wal- 
dorf-Astoria followed, and again the Appellate 
Court, an example of overabundant enthusiasm. 
Of it Mr. Blashfield has said, charitably: "We 
tried so hard to give full measure that I fear we 
overdid it." 

The Appellate Court proved, amongst other 
things, Mr. Mowbray's distinguished gifts in dec- 
oration and brought him the opportunity of the 
University Club, and subsequently, for the same 
architects, the private library of J. Pierpont 
Morgan, in East Thirty-sixth Street, whose quiet 
and beautiful interior is greatly enriched by the 
vaulted ceiling, with decorative paintings by this 
artist. These, with the mosaic panelling of the 
side walls, the pavimento of rare and costly mar- 
bles, present an ensemble reminiscent of the old 
world. With every resource at his command, the 
elder Morgan withdrew from his deposit at the 
South Kensington Museum two fifteenth century 
chairs and a bronze bust of Pescari, assigned to 
Benvenuto Cellini, which form the all-sufficient 
furnishings of the loggia. The ceiling of the stock 
room is a splendid example of Italian Renais- 
sance from the Palazzo Aldobrandini, at Venice. 

As the movement for decoration gained in popu- 
larity, hotels, theatres, restaurants, and concert 



446 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

haUs became objects of the painters' skill. Many 
of the most interesting of these, such as Blum's 
panel for Mendelssohn Hall, Dewing's ceiling for 
the cafe of the Hotel Imperial, Dodge's frieze for 
the Cafe Martin, have been lost sight of in the 
alterations or destruction of these buildings. 

Of the many decorated theatres, the New 
Amsterdam is famous for its proscenium arch, 
designed by Robert Blum and carried out by A. 
B. Wenzel. Blum died before the actual work 
was commenced. The subject, " The Drama," 
is represented by a central figure of Lyric Poetry, 
flanked on the left by Tradition and on the right 
by Truth. The other principal characters are a 
Jester, Chivalry, and a King, whose crown has 
been taken away by Death. George Gray Bar- 
nard and Hinton Perry made the sculpture for 
the theatre. 

Wilham de Leftwich Dodge is best represented 
in the seven panels and colour scheme of the Em- 
pire Theatre, designed by Carrere and Hastings, 
one of the best decorated theatres in New York, 
and especially interesting for the treatment of the 
ceiling, which follows in conception the famous ceil- 
ings of Tiepolo and Paul Baudry, the two masters 
of foreshortening in architectural composition. 

The essential spirit of true decoration, as de- 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 447 

duced from a study of the great mural painters 
of the past, provides that walls should be so 
treated as not to lose their sense of surface. In 
other words, the subjects painted should be seen 
to lie flat on the walls, like tapestry, and not in 
the round, with distance and aerial perspective, 
as in easel pictures. Tiepolo, the great Venetian 
painter of ceihngs, found that large ceihngs or 
domes with sufficient elevation could be effectively 
treated as actual openings in the roof, and painted 
many extraordinary rooms where the intention of 
the ceiling was to deceive the eye, to produce the 
effect of a continuation of the architecture of the 
room and to show the sky above. 

The ceihng of the Empire Theatre, like those 
of the Italian prototypes, represents a balustrade 
which appears to surround an opening in the roof; 
and over this balustrade figures lean, looking down 
into the theatre, while across the blue sky, beyond, 
floats a symbolic figure. The illusion from all 
sides of looking up through the balustrade is 
created by making all the lines of architecture 
converge to one vanishing point, so that nowhere 
is there an effect of the structure falling over. 
The Baudry ceihng in the Century Theatre deals 
with the same problem, and Frieseke also tried it 
in his ceiling for Wanamaker's Auditorium. 



448 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

The charm of mural painting in general does 
not depend on brush technique, nor upon fidelity 
in details, nor upon a literary subject. Designed 
to be seen from great distance, composition, con- 
struction, and colour are the vital considerations, 
and it is most effective in the big and simple ren- 
derings of thought to be conveyed. From the 
distance seen, all small things disappear. The face 
cannot be rehed upon to express feelings or emo- 
tions, which carrj^ only through the gesture of the 
whole figure, and it is much more important that 
the head or hand should be in its right place than 
that finger nails should be well drawn. 

In the zeal for decoration which followed the 
success of the Columbian Exposition's experiments 
the special fitness of the artist for his task is not 
always taken into account, and we have in New 
York and throughout the country many examples 
done by artists distinguished in other fields, which 
fail for lack of experience with the metier. 

Mr. Mowbray's frieze in the Appellate Court 
is an excellent example of strictly mural painting; 
Mr. Blashfield's pendentives in the dome of the 
Hudson County Court House, in Jersey City, 
and, above all, the decoration of the Criminal 
Court Room of the Essex County Court House, 
in Newark, by Henry Oliver Walker, fulfil ad- 




DETAIL VAL'1/IKl) c:in.I\(, Willi DKCOKAT IVK TANKLS, BV H. SIDUONS MOWBRAY 
MORGAN LIBRARY (PA(.F. _|45 ) 




DRAWING FOR PANEL ON MORGAN LIBRARY ( NOT EXECUTED; 
BY ANDREW o'CONNOR, SCULPTOR (PAGK 445) 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 449 

mirably the mission of decoration. The render- 
ing of the latter is as flat as tapestry, and the 
picture, in beautiful colour, lies upon the surface 
of the wall with all the effect of fresco. Mr. 
Dodge's handsome frieze in the Hotel Devon, rich 
in autumnal colouring, is preeminently the work 
of a mural painter. Low-toned, harmonious, and 
joyous, the groups of festival procession hand- 
somely fit the place and make a rich, glowing 
effect of warmth and comfort. 

The seven carefully finished, exquisitely drawn 
lunettes of the tea-room of the St. Regis Hotel, 
by Robert Van Vorst Sewell, on the contrary, de- 
feat the purpose of decoration. They " illustrate " 
the story of Cupid and Psyche. The same is even 
more true of Abbey's " Bowling Green," over 
the bar of the Hotel Imperial, which is essen- 
tially an illustration; while Maxfield Parrish's 
popular " Old King Cole," that quaintly humor- 
ous panel in the Knickerbocker bar, delightful as 
it is, is illustration rather than decoration. His 
panel over the mantelpiece of the " Meeting 
House " has the same prodigahty of finish, though 
in this case the room is small and the mantel low, 
so that though technically a decoration, the panel 
has all the accessibility of an easel picture. 

The Hotel Knickerbocker, besides its handsome 



450 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

Parrish — of which Arnold Bennett, whisked there 
immediately after his first arrival in this country, 
said: " I found it rather fine and apposite," — con- 
tains a fanciful decoration in high key by James 
AVall Finn, " The Masque of Flora," and in the 
dining room two small bronze fountains by Fred- 
erick MacMonnies, designed for their setting, but 
never properly attached, so that, instead of joy- 
ously spurting, a dismal trickle issues from the 
aperture and the boys' gestures lose point. 

C. Y. Turner and Kenyon Cox are represented 
in the Manhattan Hotel, the former by a series of 
historic panels, the latter by some overdoor 
lunettes. These, of course, are very professional 
in handling. Mr. Turner is better seen in the two 
panels for the De Witt Clinton High School, illus- 
trating the " Opening of the Erie Canal," realistic 
scenes, educational in purpose, representing the 
" Marriage of the Waters " and " Entering the 
Mohawk Valley." Barry Faulkner's twelve pan- 
els for the Washington Irving High School, 
though inspired by the " Knickerbocker History 
of New York," are treated in an allegorical and 
conventional way, preserving the decorative quality 
of the walls. 

The decoration of the Delia Robbia Room of 
the Vanderbilt Hotel, done by Smeraldi, a clever 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 451 

Italian, in imitation of the famous Chambre des 
Singes, of the chateau of Chantilly, is an example 
of consistent and agreeable interior decoration, 
charmingly adapted to its destination. 

New York contains an important and imposing 
decoration by Edwin Rowland Blashfield in his 
" Graduate," a large lunette in the great hall of 
the City College, done in 1908, and representing 
the artist's most mature period. The panel gains 
distinction partly through Mr. Blashfield's choice 
of a colossal figure for the central focus of the 
composition, and partly by reason of the effective 
arrangement of the hght and the strong contrasts 
of shadow. 

Wisdom, the large central figure, presides, hold- 
ing in her lap the earth, and turning towards the 
spectator the Western Hemisphere. The light 
which floods the centre of the canvas proceeds 
from a fire burning on a low altar at her feet. 
Above, in a semicircular arrangement of smoke, 
which curls aloft from the fire, float Wisdom's 
tributaries, with books and scrolls, and below her 
pedestal, in a long, curved line, sit the symbolic 
figures of the great centres of learning, the uni- 
versities, personified by graceful and character- 
istic feminine forms. 

The Graduate stands before the throne of Wis- 



452 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

dom, receiving from his Alma Mater the scroll 
and carrying the torch of learning which he has 
just lighted at the altar. To the right of these 
two dark figures — the Graduate and the Alma 
Mater — on a lower plane stands Discipline, clothed 
in red, holding a sword and a scourge; she waits 
to accompany the Graduate through life. To the 
right and left of the centre sit groups of the 
immortals, and below the composition is balanced 
by larger groups of students, seen rather in the 
literal vein, while the rest of the figures are 
symbohcal. 

The loiterer genuinely interested in mural paint- 
ing should not neglect to make the short trip 
to Jersey City and Newark to visit the two 
elaborately decorated court-houses of those cities. 
There is nothing to compare with them in New 
York in the magnitude of the undertaking, and 
they contain a great deal that is interesting in its 
bearing on decoration in this country. 

The Hudson County Court House was designed 
by Hugh Roberts, architect, and the general 
colour scheme of the building was entrusted to 
Francis D. Millet, whose work therein was fin- 
ished a few months before he was lost on the 
Titanic. The decorations include the dome, orna- 
mentally treated and embellished with the signs of 




Reproduced 



■; riie Mcptiiig lio\ 



PROVING IT BY THE BOOK, DECORATION BY MAXFIELD PARRISH 
IN THE MEETING HOUSE (PAGE 449) 



RANDOM DECORATIONS 453 

the zodiac, carried out by Aderente and Foringer, 
who assisted Mr. Blashfield in his panel, " The 
Graduate." The four figures of Fame, each 
holding a shield, with a medallion portrait, are 
characteristic examples of decoration by Mr. 
Blashfield. The main rotunda contains four large 
lunettes treated realistically, of which two are by 
Millet and two by C. Y. Turner, and besides these 
there are twelve tiny panels in monochrome, which 
illustrate events in the history of Jersey City. 
The vaulting of the corridor corners by Kenyon 
Cox is conceived in a better spirit of classic deco- 
ration and is rather fine in colour. 

The intention of the painting throughout is 
educational rather than decorative. It deals with 
concrete facts of history, literally rendered, with 
a wealth of circumstantial evidence, all of which 
is very interesting from the standpoint of informa- 
tion. This is notably true of Howard Pyle's his- 
torical frieze in the Freeholders' Room, which con- 
sists of three large panels depicting, with photo- 
graphic accuracy, the " Arrival of the Half 
Moon," "The Dutch Settlement," and "The 
Coming of the Enghsh." Pyle has loaded the 
spaces, just as he did his book illustrations, with 
authentic details of costume and accessories, most 
of which are invisible to the naked eye, but with- 



454 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK 

out which this master of detail would never have 
been satisfied. 

The Essex County Court House at Newark 
was built by Cass Gilbert, architect, and the deco- 
rations were supervised by Arthur R. Willet, who 
planned the general colour scheme and made some 
minor accessories. Mr. Blashfield made the pen- 
dentives to the dome, and there are panels in the 
various court rooms by Kenyon Cox, Will H. 
Low, Francis D. Millet, Howard Pyle, Henry 
Oliver Walker, George W. Maynard, and C. Y. 
Turner. The exterior sculpture of the building is 
by Andrew O'Connor. 

These two court-houses represent the ultimate 
fruition of that initial movement in decoration 
which was started by the Chicago fair. The 
genius and ability there discovered was all too 
rapidly organized and turned to commercial ac- 
count, so that the impetus given soon wore itself 
out and resulted in the founding of no school of 
American decoration, as might have been hoped. 
There has been, so to speak, no suite, no succes- 
sion, and with the passing of this generation of 
mural painters none other is rising to take its 
place. 



END 



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